Other games you play or have played.

[Winterbrass]

heroism is, to me, a mage smashing his foes in the head with a hammer

90% of the time, taking you seriously is like trying to keep a cat from puking on a rug. Messy, and hilarious to onlookers.

[Chakravanti]

Deus Ex Machina. A sign of Good Storytelling

?? ?

?

[theTrav]

Save or die is OK if the save can be avoided by players paying attention and being cautious.

If any of you had been looking up, or deliberately fanning out etc, would the DM have allowed at least some of you to automatically pass the save?

I look at save or die rolls as a way to encourage players to pay attention and think of cautious ways to approach a situation, not as good ways to liven up otherwise boring encounters.

[21383013543330]

Current:
Ragnarok Online
Exteel
Gunbound Classic: Thor's Hammer Server

Past
Grand Fantasia
Maplestory
Minecraft
Command and Conquer: Renegade
Warlord's Battlecry 2

[Chakravanti]

Save or die is OK if the save can be avoided by players paying attention and being cautious.

If any of you had been looking up, or deliberately fanning out etc, would the DM have allowed at least some of you to automatically pass the save?

I look at save or die rolls as a way to encourage players to pay attention and think of cautious ways to approach a situation, not as good ways to liven up otherwise boring encounters.

If you're in this conundrum to begin with tbh....I don't care to be a player at your table. The idea that players should approach the game with fear and paranoia as a standard is reserved for games like....Paranoia. I run a lovecraftian themed Mage game of investigative horror. In CoC player death is inevitable but I run my game as if Mage abilities give players that little edge they need to survive horrific encounters while adding up the preliminary pieces to prepare for the unspeakable horror that must lay ahead. If players are too noob or just plain stupid, I have what I call an 'intelligence and networking NPC' that the Chantry has appointed to their troupe. You can call him captain obvious. I use him as a chance for the players to 'check in' with their resources and go over the situation when they're stuck or to make sure they've covered all the bases before going into the lair of Dr. MadScientist.

I focus on metaplot mysteries. Everyone is a riddle wraped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. figuring out who is who, what side they're on, true motivations and affiliations are things I make layers deep, once the players breach that superficial layer, they can start figuring out what's really going on and how all these people are being played by the real enemy. I always have an antagonist but but the ultimate evil is always obscured until a lot of detective work is done. It's another reason I shy away from D&D in general. combat is never the focus of my games.

[theTrav]

It's another reason I shy away from D&D in general. combat is never the focus of my games.

Just as an aside, in 1st ed BTB combat is not the intended focus. The intended focus is efficient loot acquisition.
1gp = 1xp so combat only makes up about 1/5th of your XP if you're a moderately successful party. Stealing a monsters horde while it's out for lunch is vastly superior (and rewarded by the game mechanics) to fighting and killing the monster and then taking its loot.

[Chakravanti]

Yeah....wealth is not a goal in Mage. I mean...it CAN be if you want that to be part of your character's personality but as far as game mechanics go wealth is actually much cheaper to buy at the outset than to acquire in the game. Not to mention Entropy 4 or time 2-3 could score a winning lottery ticket if you really wanted it to.

Of course...I'd let a player do that...but not without turning some heads...

[Winterbrass]

Save or die is OK if the save can be avoided by players paying attention and being cautious.

If any of you had been looking up, or deliberately fanning out etc, would the DM have allowed at least some of you to automatically pass the save?

There are no 'saves' in our game. Perception to notice, dodge to avoid. An average human in our system has a 50-50 chance of noticing something, with bonuses based on obviousness. Something dropping soundlessly from 30m up? Most likely a slight penalty, but around 40 out of 100 average humans would be aware that they're about to die. And only 12 of those 40 would successfully get out of the way. At times, a 12% chance of surviving a seemingly random event is better than the odds of surviving combat.

Chak, you say you focus on the metaplot. Have you never had one of your characters unavoidably suffer because of their past actions? Pissing someone off, and the NPC getting revenge by kidnapping and killing members of a character's family? Asking the wrong questions and getting lethally poisoned because they 'know too much'?

[Oracle]

i used to play a private server game called rpgworld online, it was very similiar in some aspects
to this but it was very primitive even after 10 years in development. so when they finally crashed i had nothing to do. Thank you both so much for setting up a game with the same kind of ingame aspects. your awesome.

[Chakravanti]

Chak, you say you focus on the metaplot. Have you never had one of your characters unavoidably suffer because of their past actions? Pissing someone off, and the NPC getting revenge by kidnapping and killing members of a character's family? Asking the wrong questions and getting lethally poisoned because they 'know too much'?

Yeah but there's always a way to avoid death. If you're the storyteller and the character dies because of the roll of a dice it's because you, the storyteller said "If you lose this dice roll you die.' If there's 'nothing you can do about it' even though your the storyteller...then your game own you. The golden rule in all White wolf publications (and at my table) are: Fuck the rules, story matters #1. It's a big fucking world out there and just because peeps are gunning for one of your chars doesn't mean you can't find a reason to have him tipped off and/or sent support from the-enemy-of-my-enemy type of faction.

Haven't you ever seen Star Trek? THere's absolutely nothing you can't pull out of your ass to explain why character survive the worst odds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2v6rXs5J9M
Much better live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JswhkwvtMV4
Now and then I've had a really stupid player whose character I killed. It was a plot device to explain why their player was not invited to the next session.