Deadly but Fair

Forgive me if I cover old ground with this post, but I wish the point to be included in contest with this series' last post.  If you're a new reader, I suggest picking up this post.

Assuming we've done everything right — as I define it — the characters have every reason not to head back to the dungeon, as it's full of very bad demons and whatever's there has already taken down a full-on noble lord.  Personally, I'd make sure the party knew it meant, yes, a 9th level.

... except that the party, probably, wants to go back.  It's not sensible, but nevertheless it's predictable.  They've already collected a nice surface treasure.  They'll be sure that there must be a sub-surface treasure, and that means more.  And if they go back, let me add, we won't disappoint them.

In the best cases, these conflicting agendas puts the party on a knife edge, with some players being cautious and some not.  If none of your players are cautious, then clearly as a DM, generally, you're not:  a) hurting them enough; and b) humiliating them enough.

Sorry, but I've never had that strange phenomenon of players who have so little regard for their characters that they'll cast one after another into the cauldron of death without restraint.  Perhaps it's because I insist on the character being rolled in great detail, while the table watches.  On that score, I've been reassured by my players many times that they adore the character rolling process, because it involves random generation on a scale large enough that they're fascinated to see what results turn up.  This is how they explain it.  My generation system used to take much less time; but even at the very start of my career, I insisted that rolling a character meant a total stoppage of the game.  When I was but 15, playing with adults over 30, that's how they did it.  No one EVER drew back from the table and rolled their character in private, while the game went on.  Personally, perhaps because I'd been sheltered, or because I read the Dragon Magazine casually, I'd never heard of such a thing until seeing it in The Gamers.  And later, when I discovered that was normal ... let's just say it's rant fuel for me.

Putting the character-generation process centre stage, or in the centre ring if you prefer a circus analogy, makes rolling a memorable, group experience — one that's going to draw ribbing and a reputation if it's something our player does a lot.  Especially in my game.  Once Mick has rolled his fourth character in five runnings, sacrificing each stupidly one after another, he'll suffer a little, shall we say, social medicine in the bargain.  First off, his mistakes and failures are going to get picked apart by others — and for quite a while, at least as three times as many runnings as he's lost characters.  This is something I'm not going to discourage, because in social activities, shame works.  Usually.  If it doesn't then I'll wait until the next time Mick chooses to do something stupid and I'll stop the game myself, and ask a difficult question:  "Mick, why do you want to play D&D?"

See, I'm not of the opinion — as many are, who seem to boast about the slaughterfest going on in their campaigns — that people die in D&D because the rule set is harsh.  Not to disparage, but because it's a good example of someone clearly wrestling with the problem, JB brings up this element a lot.  As an adult in 1984, mass character murder was clearly being pushed, and pushed HARD, by the publishing wing of TSR.  This may have been a lack of creative juice or because for them the game consisted mostly of one-off events (given their schedules and the need for public appearances).  It may be that the many of the group were frustrated sadists — I have no better explanation for Tomb of Horrors — who were using D&D as a way to get their metaphorical buzz.

In any case, I played under multiple DMs between 1979 and 1986, and total party kills were NOT emblematic of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in any degree.  JB, and others, seem to feel it's an inherent quality of the game system:

"... mainly it's just that 1E isn't a cakewalk game to play. Characters die...and with SMALL parties (less than six or seven characters), any single loss can lead to cascade failure and disaster."

I honestly don't see it.  I don't know what JB is doing, or how he interprets the rules, but in four decades of running my own game, I've had maybe three TPKs, period.  90% of the time, it doesn't come remotely close, as I won't even have a single character die.  And this includes the 15 year period before I used negative hit points, and the 25 year period before I added a few more hit points to my characters due to body mass.

Now, as I pointed out with the kobald lair, the plethora of enemy hit points and attacks given in most game modules is simply moronic.  And that no doubt accounts for the party death ratio that many experience.  I ran KotB back in 1981, when I still hadn't cracked the code for how to make a game setting.  It took the party a long time to kill everything, but at no time did the whole party ever die at one time.  There were casualties; the end party that finished off the last room brings to mind the Ship of Theseus.  But the whole party didn't die because, again and again, they approached, fought the enemy, didn't let themselves get stupidly trapped behind the lines so that they could withdraw before it was too late.  They played CAREFULLY.  They measured their steps.  They went at the mobs with boiling oil and traps of their own and didn't mind that the whole adventure took six months to play.  We had six months.  We were still in high school.

Sorry to go all this way around a barn, but this is the only way I can make a point about players not assuming that just because there's a dungeon in my game world, it's easy to take on.  And that's been my experience with most players.  In both the Senex and the Juvenis campaigns I ran online, the players approached the world with the mindset that yes, it was dangerous.  They'd read me, they took me at my word ... and they did not have a TPK.  I don't know what other evidence I can give.  Both off and online, that's the result from the campaigns I run.  Getting a high level party is inevitable, though admittedly it that takes seven or eight years of gaming.

Getting back to it then.  Hopefully, the party IS on a knife edge.  And that sets them to deliberating the matter of going back, with this new information in hand.  In my experience, most of the time, the party doesn't split up and take sides.  Wisely, everyone wants to hold off.  Bravely, everyone wants to go forward.  The battle is inside themselves, not between one another.  Each player has their concern; and each player is there to discuss how their take on the matter might alleviate another player's concern.  And as the concerns are put forward, one by one, they're discussed.  Plans are made.  Ideas are trotted out for things that need to be purchased, to implement strategies.  Not magic potions or scrolls, but oil, holy water, more twine to make traps and snares, caltrops, iron spikes, poles, enough beets ...

[Beets?  I pointed out to a party, and maybe on this blog, some years ago that when encountering a long, dark hallway, the best thing to throw forward into the darkness is a round, firm, goodly-ripened beet.  It bounces, goes around corners, draws attention of whatever might be down there — so we can fight it here as it comes on and not down there — and what's more, leaves a series of bright red spots as it skips left and right, on dirt as well as stone.  If nothing else, its a trail we can use to find our way out, once we've gone in]

These are conversations I enjoy a lot as a dungeon master.  I can sit back, let the party chew the fat between them for as long as it takes — now and then, the entire rest of the running, if I've really got them going — and enjoy the fact that I'm a spectator.  My view of DMing is that it takes a lot of time and energy; that I'm responsible for making the game interesting for five or six hours at a time.  If 90 minutes of that is spent with the party in a state of moderate consternation about making the right decision, that's a load off my responsibility.

In no way is the party "bored."  On the contrary, agitation has a marvelous way of denying boredom.  Nor do I urge them to "make a decision" so we can "get going."  That's pretty stupid.  Not to mention selfish.  After, it's not my character deciding if it wants to put it's head on the block.

On the other hand, if a TPK so rarely happens in my game, why are the players worried at all?

Well, they've all watched a new player, sometimes an "experienced" one and some time a noob, who simply ignored this whole "Let's be careful and not die" agenda.  Result?  They die.  Pretty quickly, too.  Case in point, the Juvenis campaign when they first entered the dungeon with the fire beetles, and three out of five characters died in 10 rounds.  Not ALL of them, though ... because they had a way out and two survived.  After that object lesson, the players all got a lot more careful, all at once.

If the game rules are applied consistently and fairly, and the numbers of enemy are not too great, and a way is possible to get in and out again without the DM arbitrarily trapping the players in a dungeon, in a way that the players have little or no control over, such as a random die roll ... then a group of intelligent, cautious, innovative players can survive any situation, even ones where they're punching way above their weight.  It means not touching anything just to see what happens.  It means staying close and tight and ready to protect one another if a combat occurs.  It means doing your due diligence with reconnaissance.  It means admitting that yeah, it's time to go.  It means accepting that a dangerous situation CAN'T be overcome by clever role-playing, any more than the Viet Minh might have been.  Because the non-intelligent creatures down there are hungry and voracious; and the intelligent creatures down there really, really, really, really HATE surface people.  They've met too many surface people.

If a DM and party can get these things straight, and a few others besides, they can survive.  And it does not matter a fuck what the AD&D rules say, or how few hit points they have.  Don't squander hit points and you'll have plenty.