From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: Killing rolemaster pc's
Date: 8 Sep 92 20:30:31 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Sep8.185323.27933@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>, acd@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (andrew.c.durston) writes:
> In article <7=rnd_q.akuma@netcom.com>, akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) writes:
> > In article <reynolds.715898446@judy.cs.iastate.edu>, reynolds@cs.iastate.edu (Owen Reynolds) writes:
> > > Marijan_Madunic@panam.wimsey.bc.ca (Marijan Madunic) writes:
> > > >I have a problem (guilty complex) about killing pc's. After all they do
> > > >spend a couple of hours creating these pc's. Can anybody help me in getting
> > > >over this problem.
> > This is ignoring the real problem.  No matter how good you are,
> > some twerp can walk up to you, open-end his attack, then roll
> > high on his crit and kill you.  As a recent example, a character
> > got attacked by a squirrel while crossing a rope bridge.  The GM
> > rolled an 00 on the tiny-animal crit and killed him outright 
> > (this wasn't even taking the 100 foot fall into account).
> 	Just wondering...how did this situation come about? If a young squire
> 	or serf got lucky and offed the PC, then that was his fate ( I don't
> 	like fate points due to the "invicibility complex" as you described ).
> 	But a squirrel? If it was summoned and controlled, perhaps. I find that
> 	players are MOST frustrated when they are killed when it is not relevant
> 	to the story/situation at hand, game system not withstanding.

Why the squirrel was attacking is irrelevant, as there are hundreds
of reasons why this could happen.  In fact, the squirrel was summoned.
The point is that a 13th level character was instantly killed by a
pathetic creature, which should have been an annoyance, at best.

By the way, I find that most PC deaths, tend to be pointless, since
none of our GMs deliberatly plan to have our characters die.
Death tends to be random and accidental.  Some people seem to think 
this is a good thing.

> > 
> > Considering the huge amount of time required to create a RM
> > character, death should not be so arbitraty.
> 	Depends on the tempo of the campaign and how the "combat" situations
> 	occur. As a GM, I'm willing to give a player an NPC or help generate
> 	a new PC when he/she gets offed, but I don't give breaks. The PCs are
> 	good enough a finding ways around "seeming death" ( dead in X rounds
> 	crits or dead but soul hasn't left yet ) in my and other games.
> 	If the player enjoys the game and system, he/she will be back for more.

In our previous varient campaign, the PCs eventually reached the point
where we could fix virtually any injury.  However, the occasional
crit comes up where nothing can be done ("body turned to dust" comes
to mind).  This seems to be a threshold thing; if your characters can
survive long enough, they will be able to survive almost anything.

> > 
> > >     Your players need you to be able to slaughter them if they do the
> > > wrong thing. There's nothing worse than a GM who lets you get yourself
> > > into a really bad situation and then bullshit your way out. Your
> > > players need to know, for example, if they hadn't made that grappnel
> > > cast on the first throw, the worm of death would have caught up with
> > > them and would very probably have slain them all.
> > There is nothing worse than spending hours creating a new character
> > at the current campaign level, only to have him die pointlessly because
> > he failed some trivial dice roll.
> 	If it isn't relevant to the plot, dump the dice roll and continue
> 	onward. Given Rolemaster's complexity, I try to avoid trivial dice
> 	rolls when ever possible.

Perhaps I chose the wrong word.  By trivial, I mean easy, as in:

Player: OK, I have +127 with grapnell throw.  (rolls dice)  Oops, 02...

GM: Well, you didn't succeed with the toss; the Worm of Death catches
    up and bites you...  Well, that's the breaks, go ahead and roll up 
    another 20th level character.  Should only take 6 hours.

If you put characters in situations where die rolls determine life
or death, then the odds are against the PCs.  They will fail eventually.
Of course, this isn't a fault of RM specifically.  The RM crit system
does make it quite lethal for PCs though.  In order to create that
"threat of death", the PCs are exposed to a few crits each combat.
Even if these are mostly 'A' crits, the odds will catch up with the
PC and he will die (or even worse, he will die on the first game).

-steve
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