Second session of a new campaign? The solution is easy. "Mr GM, I give you my brand new starting character: Bob 2. He's exactly like Bob from last week, but with a 2 after his name, but without the 20 XP you awarded after the session."

1 hour ago, Desslok said:

Second session of a new campaign? The solution is easy. "Mr GM, I give you my brand new starting character: Bob 2. He's exactly like Bob from last week, but with a 2 after his name, but without the 20 XP you awarded after the session."

A player in my little sister's other gaming group actually did essentially this when his first character got killed in his very first session. He didn't even make a new character sheet; he just erased the name, looked up other Wookiee names, picked one he liked, and wrote it in.

5 hours ago, MonCal said:

That depends on the contract. I have run and been a player of games where character immortality was a given unless the fact that the PC could die was either agreed before the adventure or was decided by the player. As long as everybody has the elements clear neither case is a problem.

On this particular cases the player seems to be breaking the contract though, so that is a minor point. A "session 0, version 2.0" should be done IMO.

I meant the contract that says that you agree that I am the GM and you are a player and our respective roles are understood. If you are playing immortal characters in a Star Wars game then I can't really help you. That's outside of what I can really relate to.

Meeting with the whole group later today, the advice here has been helpful.

Let me sum up my thought process... no matter how hard I try to find another...

On 21.10.2017 at 1:16 AM, Archlyte said:

If you allow this you are in dangerous waters. Your game can be perceived as having only fake danger, and the characters mortality is a very wishy washy thing. Also having the player come back and basically invoke player agency to rez their character is kind of sketchy for me anyway. I don't know how they "died" and if you mean dead where they lost 3 times their Threshold or were just defeated, and could still be alive.

It depends on what you want for the game, but you also have the danger of making it seem like dead is optional in a game that already leans so heavy into keeping PCs alive.

Bringing back the PC can be done in many ways. Either glumsily at meta level "you didn't die last session", or more cleverly as part of the plot. In next session new PCs are on a mission to rescue the one from evil megalords medical (read torture) facility, where he/she is kept as experiment subject. Every moment he/she there means agonizing pain for that character. When the character is rescued, the player will definitely be more cautious with it.

This game is not PC vs GM, but more important thing is the narrative. Personally I think that player enjoyment is important. Bringing back te PC for the one character who wants it may be good solution. It depends on so many factors, we here cannot say what is right (how much experience does the player have? If he/she is a newbie, being too strict may kill their whole enthusiasm for gaming). As

On 22.10.2017 at 0:43 AM, Archlyte said:

Yeah a demanding player like that should be shut down as that's breach of social contract. I feel like characters need to have mortality or there is no tension. If the characters can't really die then danger is pretty useless.

I call bull. If player says they want thing X then you as GM listen to that player, and you talk about it, or you are bad GM. You don't have to do exactly what player wants, but you surely listen the player. Players should NEVER be shut down. Player probably said what they said because they was frustrated. And what was said was their try to do something about it. It may have been clumsy, but it still is a start.

And to OP (and other too). Watch follwing two videos (especially the latter (around 5 minute mark), it's very much about what lead to your situation). They may give you a glue what went wrong. And if they don't, it still contains great thoughts about roleplaying games. TL;DW: Players often rebel against railroading (and if only option is escape, is often seen as railroading, and rebelled against), even if it means they will die.

And maybe better video, about losing.

I've seen the first one already and I'll check out the second one. What I find odd, is that the player has GMed for our group in the past and presented situations where a straight fight would be un-winnable. Yesterday I tried to talk to them about it, but they didn't really seem to want to, we were trying out a different system because of what had happened last session. But when I or one of the other players tried to talk about what we could do, or if one of the other players had an issue (they didn't), the player seemed to want to ignore it.

The player has played quite a bit of D&D, and GMed a few times for our Star Wars group in addition to playing. So, after thinking it over a bit more, I think that the issue is more about this specific character, and their backstory/personality, rather than the fact that a character died. I don't think I presented only one solution, but perhaps I could have explained the situation better to highlight that there were more than one, rather than leave it up to the players to discover.

14 hours ago, kkuja said:

Bringing back the PC can be done in many ways. Either glumsily at meta level "you didn't die last session", or more cleverly as part of the plot. In next session new PCs are on a mission to rescue the one from evil megalords medical (read torture) facility, where he/she is kept as experiment subject. Every moment he/she there means agonizing pain for that character. When the character is rescued, the player will definitely be more cautious with it.

This game is not PC vs GM, but more important thing is the narrative. Personally I think that player enjoyment is important. Bringing back te PC for the one character who wants it may be good solution. It depends on so many factors, we here cannot say what is right (how much experience does the player have? If he/she is a newbie, being too strict may kill their whole enthusiasm for gaming). As

I call bull. If player says they want thing X then you as GM listen to that player, and you talk about it, or you are bad GM. You don't have to do exactly what player wants, but you surely listen the player. Players should NEVER be shut down. Player probably said what they said because they was frustrated. And what was said was their try to do something about it. It may have been clumsy, but it still is a start.

And to OP (and other too). Watch follwing two videos (especially the latter (around 5 minute mark), it's very much about what lead to your situation). They may give you a glue what went wrong. And if they don't, it still contains great thoughts about roleplaying games. TL;DW: Players often rebel against railroading (and if only option is escape, is often seen as railroading, and rebelled against), even if it means they will die.

And maybe better video, about losing.

Man, I'm starting to feel like I need to just write posts directly addressing Coleville because his videos are getting linked a lot. He has a lot of good points but he takes stance s on things sometimes that don't need one answer in my opinion. His default reasoning is almost always "that's how I do it" so that by the time the issue is fully explored many of his topics are qualified in that way. I have played in a lot of games where death is optional, and I have run a few like that too. The problem becomes one where there just isn't much tension. I don't prefer to play in those kinds of games, and so for me they are a no go. I am very much against the GM vs. PC stance, but the GM is responsible for the continuity of the physics of the game world. If you make death something that is not subject to regular physics as described in the narration, it becomes a point of negotiation, and then there really is no consequences other than money loss or proxy death of beloved NPCs. If a Character is depicted as dying of gunshot wounds or their fighter blows up but they later show up alive just because the player wants the character to have lived, what this is saying is that that particular character was more important than the physical reality of the universe in which the character lives.

13 hours ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

I've seen the first one already and I'll check out the second one. What I find odd, is that the player has GMed for our group in the past and presented situations where a straight fight would be un-winnable. Yesterday I tried to talk to them about it, but they didn't really seem to want to, we were trying out a different system because of what had happened last session. But when I or one of the other players tried to talk about what we could do, or if one of the other players had an issue (they didn't), the player seemed to want to ignore it.

The player has played quite a bit of D&D, and GMed a few times for our Star Wars group in addition to playing. So, after thinking it over a bit more, I think that the issue is more about this specific character, and their backstory/personality, rather than the fact that a character died. I don't think I presented only one solution, but perhaps I could have explained the situation better to highlight that there were more than one, rather than leave it up to the players to discover.

I am feeling like this is really about that individual. I would say that not wanting to talk about it is a red flag. If I'm understanding it right and the topic gets brought up and everyone either pulls a stupid face or changes the subject, it's about mollification. Someone in that group is perceived as being someone the others don't want to anger or annoy, and they are glossing it over to avoid the issue.

D&D, especially at the sweet spot levels, allows for character death to be undone. The person who cannot stand to see the character die is just wanting to preserve what they have accomplished, which in most cases to me is going to be a gamist approach, and has more to do with points put where than it does with who the character actually was. To me that is especially annoying, because what the player really isn't wanting to give up in that case is the time they spent "leveling" which to me says the story and characterization were probably not too much on their minds. In the rare case that the person was just attached to the character as a character I would have more compassion, but I still don't allow for serial immortality in games that don't have it as a part of the setting and rules. You referenced the backstory/personality. Is there a big pattern of essentially making the same character in different campaigns? Everyone does this to some degree I think, but some people have a set archetype and this character who died was probably right on as far as being designed to that model. The player feels that to make anything else will be a lesser facsimile or something other than their beloved archetype.

When you play in that person's game I don't think you are going to get the deference that they expected of you, I suspect they will kill you permanently, so don't be shocked when it happens. When you run for them: In your session 0 make it clear what your policy is on character death, and make it clear again.

On 10/19/2017 at 10:09 PM, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

They spend about 20-30 minutes of real time wandering, they are now in an area I hadn't planned on exploring. So I had them find this box with a tracking device inside, they take it back to the building where they were staying. They roll a despair on the open check meaning the device is activated. Then on the check to shut it down, they roll a despair and triumph (in between the two rolls they took the time to read what was in the box). So I say "you did it, but they're already here, they come in through the door. There's a window behind you're on the ground floor, so you could go out the window if you wanted." The enemies I had enter the room where two vibro ax wielding rivals and 5 minions. They stay and fight resulting in 1.5 deaths by crit, and another player saying "just say my character died."

Uh-oh. I see a few red flags here so please tell me if I'm misunderstanding the situation.

The first red flag is that the PCs entered an area you hadn't planned on exploring. Given that that the players took 20 - 30 minutes moving about a space inside the game, I take this to mean that they engaged in a dungeoncrawl; they moved from room-to-room or tunnel-to-tunnel and you described what they saw in each location. From a general gamemastering perspective, you shouldn't give players access to locations or information that you aren't prepared for them to touch on. While I'm generally pro-improvisation, it's always a good idea to think through every action a PC could take and account for it before the game. Count on the PCs doing something you can't script out ahead of time.

The second red flag is that the players took 20 - 30 minutes wandering before something memorable happened. Why did this happen? Were they wandering around a map you created? As a rule of thumb, there's no need to have players tell you if they're going "left" or "right" or "forward" in a narrative game. The point is to create an interesting, player controlled narrative where the stakes are escalated or de-escalated by the choices they make. Failed die rolls can result in the PCs becoming lost in-game but that doesn't mean you have to spend 20 minutes in play time role-playing that out.

The third red flag is that you threw an overwhelming number of NPCs at them. I don't object to the Threat resulting in the NPCs showing up unexpectedly but two vibro-ax wielding Rivals and 5 minions is too much for a combat encounter in Session 1.

This campaign should be given a re-boot. I would give the PCs their characters back and try and salvage all the work you've already put into the game. Just say they succeeded in defeating their attackers and take it from there.

9 hours ago, Archlyte said:

If a Character is depicted as dying of gunshot wounds or their fighter blows up but they later show up alive just because the player wants the character to have lived, what this is saying is that that particular character was more important than the physical reality of the universe in which the character lives.

I don't disagree with you, though I don't absolute agree either. That is partially about how much realism you want. After all, this whole game is about imaginary world (people e.g. don't survive about being freezed, but that is totally other matter). I read between the lines that players (and maybe GM) are not very experienced players (TPK on session 1 tells me that GM may be new to RPGs or system in hand), and are maybe young. That also affects things, about what they enjoy.

P.S. My original reply was a bit too opinionated, so I apology for that.

6 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I am feeling like this is really about that individual. I would say that not wanting to talk about it is a red flag. If I'm understanding it right and the topic gets brought up and everyone either pulls a stupid face or changes the subject, it's about mollification. Someone in that group is perceived as being someone the others don't want to anger or annoy, and they are glossing it over to avoid the issue.

Other possibility is that all players whose character died were actually hurt by what happened, and they need some time to process it.

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

Uh-oh. I see a few red flags here so please tell me if I'm misunderstanding the situation.

There may be a small one, this was my first attempt at a sandbox type game. So I had worked out some of the details, but not all.

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

The first red flag is that the PCs entered an area you hadn't planned on exploring. Given that that the players took 20 - 30 minutes moving about a space inside the game, I take this to mean that they engaged in a dungeoncrawl; they moved from room-to-room or tunnel-to-tunnel and you described what they saw in each location. From a general gamemastering perspective, you shouldn't give players access to locations or information that you aren't prepared for them to touch on. While I'm generally pro-improvisation, it's always a good idea to think through every action a PC could take and account for it before the game. Count on the PCs doing something you can't script out ahead of time.

This may have come from a failing to understand how to run a sandbox game well on my part, I was confused when they wanted to go into the sewers (did I mention it was the sewers last time?) and I couldn't come up with a reason to keep them out. I suppose after I figured more out, I wanted something interesting to happen than "you wander around the sewer for x amount of time."

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

The second red flag is that the players took 20 - 30 minutes wandering before something memorable happened. Why did this happen? Were they wandering around a map you created? As a rule of thumb, there's no need to have players tell you if they're going "left" or "right" or "forward" in a narrative game. The point is to create an interesting, player controlled narrative where the stakes are escalated or de-escalated by the choices they make. Failed die rolls can result in the PCs becoming lost in-game but that doesn't mean you have to spend 20 minutes in play time role-playing that out.

Perhaps its just the realist in me, or the fact that one of my players likes drawing maps out, but I enjoy the left, right, forward/backward dynamic. Unless its for a major plot point, going left and right should yield different results. If you go out to the grocery store, you'll end up at a different one (probably anyway) depending on if you go left or right.

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

The third red flag is that you threw an overwhelming number of NPCs at them. I don't object to the Threat resulting in the NPCs showing up unexpectedly but two vibro-ax wielding Rivals and 5 minions is too much for a combat encounter in Session 1.

I supposed that even though I know that players don't like having their options limited, I think that it makes sense at times, and I want to do it, but perhaps I just don't have enough experience as a GM to do it well.

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

This campaign should be given a re-boot. I would give the PCs their characters back and try and salvage all the work you've already put into the game. Just say they succeeded in defeating their attackers and take it from there.

Alas, I would but one of the other players said he wants his character to remain dead, and the player whose character's backstory was linked with the prior player's character's backstory, decided that if he wanted his character to remain dead, his character would be dead also.

Now, the player who wanted their character back wants to keep playing D&D for the moment, and that will work for the moment for me as well (since I'm not the GM that ran what was supposed to be a one-shot), as I have the confusing situation of 4 characters, currently being in 3 different groups, at least two of which are on the same planet. So it's confusing...

2 hours ago, kkuja said:

I read between the lines that players (and maybe GM) are not very experienced players (TPK on session 1 tells me that GM may be new to RPGs or system in hand), and are maybe young.

I supposed (for it to be true in this case), it depends on how you define "new" and "young" I would say no to new (about 15 or so long sessions{6-9 hours}) but that seems like a small number when I write it so I may be wrong on that count, and maybe to young (group age is between 18 and 22/23).

On 10/19/2017 at 4:04 PM, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

So, last weekend we had our first session of our new campaign, one thing lead to another, and they ended up in an unwinnable situation. 3 of the 4 PCs died, and everyone seemed to get over it.

However, today I got a message from one of the players saying that they where unhappy with what had happened, and that "we'll make it work somehow" that their character is alive. I've found myself quite unsure about what to do, on the one hand it wasn't planned and slightly anti-climatic, on the other hand, I gave them a way out of the fight that resulted that way, they just didn't take it, and at the time they all said they were fine with what had happened, even if it took them all a few minutes to actually say anything.

Maybe its just that way this week has gone, but I can't figure out what to do with this. The other two players who had their characters die have already made new PCs, so I don't know how they'll react to this. I'm finding it slightly irritating since at the time the player said they were fine with it and they had ideas for a new character.

I'm quite lost here. Help FFG community your my only hope.

Whenever this comes up, I simply refer to the Darth Maul Effect.

Darth Maul was cut in half, and fell down a Star Wars Standard Bottomless Shaft and still lived.

So if that can happen, then IMO, pretty much anyone can potentially come back from the dead. I mean, there is literal Space Magic in the Force, which can heal and do other crazy things at the writer's whim, and then there is technology so advanced it might as well be magic.

You can come up with any number of reasons how the character survived.
Some random ones off the top of my head:

1. Clone. This has been used multiple times in Star Wars to bring a character back from the dead. Personally I enjoy this one, because it allows you to play with the "Am I simply the sum of my clone donor, or am I my own person?" storylines, and I really enjoy those.

2. He Got Better. Someone found his "Not Dead Yet" body, and dragged him to some form of suspended animation equipment, and got him to a doctor that was able to heal him, and replace any needed bits with cybernetics.

3. If it's a Force User character, they could perhaps "Make a Faustian Deal" with the Dark Side to survive, letting their hate about how they died sustain them until they can find a way to crawl back to the surface or whatever.

4. Similar to 3, but they make some deal with the Light Side, to come back. In either example, come up with any number of oddities about things that might have "come back with them." Or whatever.

5. They are a replicant, someone got a hold of their corpse, and were able to imprint a copy of their mental patterns onto a matrix, and use it to animate a human looking droid. There are examples of this in the EU from what I hear. Similar to the Clone story, but with a more "Mechanical Soul" angle that could be explored.

6. They just didn't actually die. They were able to drag themselves to some kind of life support, or escape pod, or whatever fits the situation in question, and were able to survive. They spent months healing and recovering, and have since returned to continue the mission or whatever.

I mean, there is a HUGE amount of inspiration for how this could be explained away, Mass Effect 2 comes to mind from recent stuff. The Old Man's War book series by John Scalzi is another one, though the book Ghost Brigade (in the series) might give you more inspiration about this specific plot.
The Force Unleashed 2 also explores this. The new Battlestar Gallactica series also dives into concepts of continued life, or rebirth, via technology.

As long as you the GM are ok with this, the sky's the limit on how you can make it work. The question really is "do you want to let this happen?"

8 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Man, I'm starting to feel like I need to just write posts directly addressing Coleville because his videos are getting linked a lot. He has a lot of good points but he takes stance s on things sometimes that don't need one answer in my opinion. His default reasoning is almost always "that's how I do it" so that by the time the issue is fully explored many of his topics are qualified in that way. I have played in a lot of games where death is optional, and I have run a few like that too. The problem becomes one where there just isn't much tension. I don't prefer to play in those kinds of games, and so for me they are a no go. I am very much against the GM vs. PC stance, but the GM is responsible for the continuity of the physics of the game world. If you make death something that is not subject to regular physics as described in the narration, it becomes a point of negotiation, and then there really is no consequences other than money loss or proxy death of beloved NPCs. If a Character is depicted as dying of gunshot wounds or their fighter blows up but they later show up alive just because the player wants the character to have lived, what this is saying is that that particular character was more important than the physical reality of the universe in which the character lives.

By the way. Colville does not speak for immortal PCs. Neither do I. He has killed PCs many times, and he talks about it in those two videos. Latter video is more about situations which has some similarities with OPs situation, for external viewer. OP only can decide if those similarities are real. I posted those videos, because of those observed similarities, and because we all can learn to be better GMs. Maybe Colville is totally wrong, we cannot know it unless we consciously think about those things (and there rarely is one truth in this kind of things). Colville himself has said that his primary goal in to make people speak and think about things he speaks. He has said he doesn't speak about THE truth but about his way. Personally, I love PC death, when it's dramatic and done properly. I have hate random deaths just because of bad die roll. But is a school of thoughts difference.

And BTW2, in FFG SW RPG it's very hard for PC to actually die. According the RAW, there is only one way (well, two crits that kill), rolling a crit of 141 or higher, "The End Is Nigh" and "Dead" both result a character death. For example getting 100 points over your wound threshold is not death by RAW, but in some situations it is best to decide it was death. Nothing else than those two crits are death according to RAW. GM may decide otherwise (e.g. you go over your WT, your dead), and that's not inherently bad. It's bad if it causes bad blood between players. And if GM decides that a PC dies, then it up to discussion, whether it was a good solution. Narrative reasons are other matter, which point out the focus of this system. If a character is hit by ISD superlaser, it might be best to decide that the PC dies. But rules don't explicitly say so. It, as many other things, are left to GM and PC to decide (if I remember correctly, it's not explicitly defined who decides it). In this case crit over 140 was not rolled, so rules don't say that the PC died. GM made a decision, which maybe right or wrong. My final advice to OP is, think hard about what happened, and try to learn from it (I'm not editorializing what you should learn, I'm just sure you can learn something from it, even if just "ignore that one a-hole tentacle face in FFG forums").

My only real point generally might be that "life is short". Don't sacrifice your friends because of imaginary character in game. Sometimes unexpected PC death just because something was rolled, is a bad thing. In PF, when my level 13 wizard was one shotted at first round of combat while I was withdrawing from situation which I knew would soon escalate to violence, I was really mad to GM. Only reason I continued in game was because we have gamed together over 20 years. He screwed up, as I have sometimes done (actually, I have screwed up really often in both life and as a GM).

You, Archlyte, and I definitely have different gaming styles. I hope we can see past our differences and possibly learn something from each other. I value your input in this thread and forums.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

There may be a small one, this was my first attempt at a sandbox type game. So I had worked out some of the details, but not all.

Sandbox games are tricky. I have GMed hundreds of sessions in sandbox games (and I have almost 30 years of gaming experience) and I still encounter problems at every session. But it gets easier. Our current campaign is kind of clusterf..., because there haven't been been a common thread through it. It's been kind of ultimate sandboxing, where PCs have been running around galaxy and doing things. I failed to give proper structure to sandbox. But next time I will do better.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

This may have come from a failing to understand how to run a sandbox game well on my part, I was confused when they wanted to go into the sewers (did I mention it was the sewers last time?) and I couldn't come up with a reason to keep them out. I suppose after I figured more out, I wanted something interesting to happen than "you wander around the sewer for x amount of time."

I think what generally what you did was correct. Your implementation just had few problems. Personally I would have put much smaller opposition in there. But I tend to err on caution.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

Perhaps its just the realist in me, or the fact that one of my players likes drawing maps out, but I enjoy the left, right, forward/backward dynamic. Unless its for a major plot point, going left and right should yield different results. If you go out to the grocery store, you'll end up at a different one (probably anyway) depending on if you go left or right.

Maps are problematic. I love maps, but I mostly have stopped using them, because sometimes some players take them too literally. We literally had a argument, which broke the game flow, when one player thought he was behind a wall, because his mini had kind of wall between him and stormtroopers, which shot him, and after soak, made 2 points on damage. Player can map things out if they want, but those are maps made by players, which may differ from reality. Nowadays I generally make very rought maps, where PCs can put their minis to point out the room they are in. I have found out that less detail I add, more PCs use their imagination on how they can utilize the environment.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

I supposed that even though I know that players don't like having their options limited, I think that it makes sense at times, and I want to do it, but perhaps I just don't have enough experience as a GM to do it well.

You get experience by GMing. So I just advice you to GM much. Try different things. Play a lot of oneshots, where there is less of a emotional attachments to character. That way you can experiment different things. Play with different people. Make mistakes, analyse them and learn from them. Don't take anyones advices as final truth, but listen all advices, and find what's the reasoning behind them, and learn. Find your own GMing style.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

Alas, I would but one of the other players said he wants his character to remain dead, and the player whose character's backstory was linked with the prior player's character's backstory, decided that if he wanted his character to remain dead, his character would be dead also.

So you kind of let the other player decide fate of two characters... I can see this might cause problems. Again, I'm not saying it was wrong. Just that I may now undertood better if the player who had their agency given to other player may feel they want a change.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

Now, the player who wanted their character back wants to keep playing D&D for the moment, and that will work for the moment for me as well (since I'm not the GM that ran what was supposed to be a one-shot), as I have the confusing situation of 4 characters, currently being in 3 different groups, at least two of which are on the same planet. So it's confusing...

Time is a good healer. What I probably would do is setup a new campaign later with a clean slate. And talk about how I made a mistake, apologize, and promise to do a better job next time (even if I hadn't actually done anything wrong). I know this would work for me/us, and taking a blame from this kind of situation is easy for me. This might not work for you.

13 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

I supposed (for it to be true in this case), it depends on how you define "new" and "young" I would say no to new (about 15 or so long sessions{6-9 hours}) but that seems like a small number when I write it so I may be wrong on that count, and maybe to young (group age is between 18 and 22/23).

I would define you as fairly inexperienced and young, but those are not bad things, and should NOT be seen as derogatory. You still have a lot to learn, but you all will learn fast. You have exciting world of roleplaying in front of you, ready to be explored. In all, I envy you. Have fun!

I'm 50/50 on maps. I find that when one is provided for providing a room to show cover or the like, neither I or they care where the cover is just that they're in it. My players have agreed with this. If it takes a short sprint to move from A to B they can make it. I'm also sure to ask my players whether or not they're in cover at any given time because in some cases (like my move expert) he would need to see his opponents to move an object to squish them, or being a spotter for a ranged character.

50 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

I'm 50/50 on maps. I find that when one is provided for providing a room to show cover or the like, neither I or they care where the cover is just that they're in it. My players have agreed with this. If it takes a short sprint to move from A to B they can make it. I'm also sure to ask my players whether or not they're in cover at any given time because in some cases (like my move expert) he would need to see his opponents to move an object to squish them, or being a spotter for a ranged character.

In tactical situations I use only range band map (i.e. picture which has box for each range band). I have found that working best for us. Because sometimes there are situations when one dimensional range band map doesn't work, I made a two dimensional, but I haven't playtested it yet. Now that I think about it, that seems fairly comlex, so I may go back to normal maps, just enforcing the range band idea more forcefully. I have to think about this. Thank you.

What's wrong with 2? **** why not 3 dimension? Because we're not in Saga edition the idea of X feet is out the door, and having a multi level room can be a big deal. If Chez the Chiss Bounty Hunter needs to bolt across a room and up some stairs to the second floor per RAW this is likely still short range. In Saga it would be X feet or squares which means he might not make it due to having to move 30 feet across the room, 10 or so up the stairs (as they're stairs this would be a bit longer even if the next floor is 10 high), then another 5 or 6 to the spot he wants to be. I think I ran out of moves around the stair case in Saga.

2 hours ago, kkuja said:

I think what generally what you did was correct. Your implementation just had few problems. Personally I would have put much smaller opposition in there. But I tend to err on caution.

I finally got a chance to what the video, and I think what I did wrong (at least a large part of it) is not have an encounter that was hard/impossible to win, but I forced them into such an encounter. I think I will tell the players as much next time we meet, that I may give them encounters that are very difficult, or impossible if you do them wrong, but that I shouldn't have forced one on them, especially at such a low xp level.

3 hours ago, kkuja said:

So you kind of let the other player decide fate of two characters... I can see this might cause problems. Again, I'm not saying it was wrong. Just that I may now undertood better if the player who had their agency given to other player may feel they want a change.

I asked the second player if he wanted his character back, the first player had already said that he didn't want his back, the second player said that since the first player didn't want his back, he wanted to make a new character and combine it with the other (first player's) PCs backstory.

Out of curiosity if a player in one of your groups said that since character x died, and that player is making character z, I want to keep my character y dead, and make a new one. What would you say to that?

3 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Whenever this comes up, I simply refer to the Darth Maul Effect.

Excellent point. Interestingly enough the character in question is a force user who seemed to be moving at a very high rate towards the dark side (about as high as you can get without murder). There are some options, now if I could just get the player to talk about some ideas, or if they just want to start new campaign or something else.

3 hours ago, kkuja said:

Time is a good healer. What I probably would do is setup a new campaign later with a clean slate. And talk about how I made a mistake, apologize, and promise to do a better job next time (even if I hadn't actually done anything wrong). I know this would work for me/us, and taking a blame from this kind of situation is easy for me. This might not work for you.

This might be what we do, it looks like not everyone is going to be able to meet next time, so I'm going to suggest a one-shot in another system, then by the time we get back around to starting up again we'll (hopefully) have found a solution.

11 minutes ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

Out of curiosity if a player in one of your groups said that since character x died, and that player is making character z, I want to keep my character y dead, and make a new one. What would you say to that?

I don't fully understand your question in this context (sorry, it has been a long day at work, and it's midnight here, and I may have misunderstood something earlier). But I'll answer generally. When character dies, I try keep small debriefing after session with few questions: How did it make players feel? How do they want to continue? If I read your question correctly, you have two dead characters, and two players who want to make new characters. I don't see any problem with that.

Now after rereading your original text I commented, I understood I had read in incorrectly, and probably understand your question better. And so what I wrote was practically totally incorrect. I'm sorry about that. Interpreting the whole situation again. If you have two characters (A and B) and other one dies (A), and player of other one wants to die because of it (B), but then player of B later changes his mind, I'd have a talk with that player (B). "Your character had an arch, which came to conclusion. Do you really want to undo that?" If the player wants it, I'd probably decide that character B is improsoned, or otherwise requires saving, and I'd give that player a temporary character (or let him make one), and he would use it until the original character is saved. If the player A whose death resulted the death of other character would want to undo his death, then I'd ask that player that your characters death caused the other character to die, and he won't be coming back. Do you want to take his death to your characters psychological burden? If the player is willing to accept that kind of Romeo and Julie level tragedy, I'd allow it, IF the other player would OK with it. I'd take him also to discussion. If player A would want to bring both characters back, then I'd gather the whole group together and ask "How do make this work, so it doesn't break our suspence of disbelief?". If good solution is found then I'd allow it. Anyway, in all scenarios above, I might give characters Obligation (e.g. Obsession (commemorate dead character), responsibility (trying to redeem with charity what happened), addiction (character tries to drown his sorrow), Dutybound (help family ofdead character), Favor (if someone helped the character to survive) or betrayl (character feel he betrayd his friend and must redeem himself)) related to how they survived, or to decsribe the mental trauma they acquired.

Did I answer at all to what you meant?

P.S. IMO Obligation is the best mechanic in game and I will use it every FFG SW game, even if it's Age of Rebellion or Force and Destiny game.

8 hours ago, Imperial Stormtrooper said:

I finally got a chance to what the video, and I think what I did wrong (at least a large part of it) is not have an encounter that was hard/impossible to win, but I forced them into such an encounter. I think I will tell the players as much next time we meet, that I may give them encounters that are very difficult, or impossible if you do them wrong, but that I shouldn't have forced one on them, especially at such a low xp level.

My hats off to you. It takes some humility and experience to realize and acknowledge that you may have just f-ed up. If you just come right out with your players and say as much, admitting you are still figuring out this whole sandbox thing and you suggest just ignoring it or rebooting it, it'll probably be water under the bridge. Personally that is what I would do. (And basically had to do after our first encounter with stormtroopers. Those b*tches are deadly at low level).

I don't know your group but I wouldn't be surprised if it quickly becomes a fond story that will live on in infamy as "hey remember that time you TKP'ed the party?" and everyone laughs. I could be wrong but it sounds like it could fix more than just the issue with this one player, as everyone gets a "second chance".

On 10/24/2017 at 3:11 PM, kkuja said:

Did I answer at all to what you meant?

I think that you may have crossed what player B wanted. In the instance that I was talking about, player B wanted to keep their character dead rather then bring them back. But your response was helpful in either case.

On ‎10‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 9:51 AM, kkuja said:

By the way. Colville does not speak for immortal PCs. Neither do I. He has killed PCs many times, and he talks about it in those two videos. Latter video is more about situations which has some similarities with OPs situation, for external viewer. OP only can decide if those similarities are real. I posted those videos, because of those observed similarities, and because we all can learn to be better GMs. Maybe Colville is totally wrong, we cannot know it unless we consciously think about those things (and there rarely is one truth in this kind of things). Colville himself has said that his primary goal in to make people speak and think about things he speaks. He has said he doesn't speak about THE truth but about his way. Personally, I love PC death, when it's dramatic and done properly. I have hate random deaths just because of bad die roll. But is a school of thoughts difference.

And BTW2, in FFG SW RPG it's very hard for PC to actually die. According the RAW, there is only one way (well, two crits that kill), rolling a crit of 141 or higher, "The End Is Nigh" and "Dead" both result a character death. For example getting 100 points over your wound threshold is not death by RAW, but in some situations it is best to decide it was death. Nothing else than those two crits are death according to RAW. GM may decide otherwise (e.g. you go over your WT, your dead), and that's not inherently bad. It's bad if it causes bad blood between players. And if GM decides that a PC dies, then it up to discussion, whether it was a good solution. Narrative reasons are other matter, which point out the focus of this system. If a character is hit by ISD superlaser, it might be best to decide that the PC dies. But rules don't explicitly say so. It, as many other things, are left to GM and PC to decide (if I remember correctly, it's not explicitly defined who decides it). In this case crit over 140 was not rolled, so rules don't say that the PC died. GM made a decision, which maybe right or wrong. My final advice to OP is, think hard about what happened, and try to learn from it (I'm not editorializing what you should learn, I'm just sure you can learn something from it, even if just "ignore that one a-hole tentacle face in FFG forums").

My only real point generally might be that "life is short". Don't sacrifice your friends because of imaginary character in game. Sometimes unexpected PC death just because something was rolled, is a bad thing. In PF, when my level 13 wizard was one shotted at first round of combat while I was withdrawing from situation which I knew would soon escalate to violence, I was really mad to GM. Only reason I continued in game was because we have gamed together over 20 years. He screwed up, as I have sometimes done (actually, I have screwed up really often in both life and as a GM).

You, Archlyte, and I definitely have different gaming styles. I hope we can see past our differences and possibly learn something from each other. I value your input in this thread and forums.

I think there is wisdom in what you are saying, and often it is the easy way out to be insensitive, so I don't want to seem like that is my stance. I believe that you are right about that if it comes down to it you shouldn't lightly kill a PC and provoke a friend. I never kill a PC for fun, I never construct "Killer" obstacles or creatures, and I really try to help them avoid sticking their heads in a meat grinder. But at the end of the day I can't have them disproving the lethality of their dangerous world. Adversity is required for Adventure. They have to be able to experience negative events on a spectrum to be able to gauge how bad something was in context. If I take the worst consequence off the table then it's going to be very limited as far as how much tension can be infused into the game.

As I said earlier, this game is already hard to kill PC's in, so if it happens it should have been a situation that warranted death. What's the rule on 3x the negative wound threshold in damage then? I thought that was death too. You are also right that there is a certain amount of fiat built into pronouncing characters dead in this game, which makes it that much more important to settle the issue in the social contract. I see three main possibilities: 1) you say "if I say you die you die" 2) you say nothing about it and just let it happen as it does and deal with the consequences 3) you say nothing about it but decide that you are not going to kill PCs unless RAW is clear that they are dead so it's not really you killing the PC.

As for Colville, I have watched many of his videos because a friend of mine really likes him and I respect my friend's judgment. I have learned a thing or two from Colville, I won't lie, and to be honest his video on the topic of PC surrender was just plain awesome. I had to put on my big boy intellectual honesty hat for that one, but what a good video. I also wear that hat when I read your posts and I feel that especially since we have differing styles that we are valuable to one another. Have a great day, MTFBWY

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

What's the rule on 3x the negative wound threshold in damage then? I thought that was death too.

Away from book, but I think you just stop losing wounds at some point so healing time isn't too crazy. I want to say 2x, but maybe it's 3x.

2 hours ago, Archlyte said:

W hat's the rule on 3x the negative wound threshold in damage then? I thought that was death too.

EotE CRB p. 216 says "When wounds exceed a character's wound threshold, the character should track how many wounds he's exceeded the threshold by, to a maximum of twice the wound threshold. He mush heal wounds until his wounds are below his wound threshold before he is no longer incapacitated."

The only way to die RAW is by rolling 141+ on the critical injury table.