I think a fresh start is what's needed, and a proper session zero with a start mid adventure. Limitless options doesn't mean much in a sandbox if you don't like imagination, which is why my group can be really inventive in star wars but really slow in Shadow run; both universes have different expectations and a sandbox doesn't mean anything if your players don't have ambition. Usually it's better to start them off on an ongoing job like a movie and play it through scene by scene. Perhaps start with episodic jobs before moving onto greater ventures once they are probably acclimatised to the environment.

In our group death is rare, but when a character dies they are usually dead. In the last months two characters died and one went MIA. The first died from a slit throat from bleeding out and lacked the action to attempt to fix his own injury because he was staggered, his death cemented Mara Jade was one of the more respected antagonists (Bar Grand Moff Kevlin), the second was blinded and surrounded by storm troopers on a grav lift defending a mine shaft, and chose to sacrifice him in the mass combat to buy the defence more time, cutting the platform grav lifts to plummet to their deaths. The last chose to remain with a sith ship and go into wild space; the rest of the party abandoned him to his fate; largely because we had greater problems within the galaxy (that and Sith artefacts are questionable, after being a thrall to one for 2 years, Tobin wasn't eager to repeat that experience.).

Each of these deaths had a purpose within the setting, they happened spontaneously but they also proved a point that what the squad do as shock troopers within the alliance is dangerous. That being said as an action heavy campaign, that fits our means.

4 hours ago, Darzil said:

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.

3 hours ago, arMedBeta said:

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.

Ah thank you guys. I would have eventually killed someone with this! Your forum actions saved lives today.

On ‎10‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 7:32 AM, kkuja said:

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

This is valid. Communication is important, and some people have a hard time doing that so it could be that they are stuffing it, but that's really not good. If they didn't process it in the time between sessions then I would wonder if they just didn't think about it until the next session, or they ruminated on it all week (for weekly games) and just allowed their feelings to get the better of them. I think that investing that much into characters and having that much bleed is not good. I can see a lot more of a downside to being that attached than an upside. Hanging on too tight isn't a good idea. Well, unless of course there is no death in the game.

So let's say you have a player who you know loves their character so much that if the character is threatened, they get risk averse. And/Or if the character dies, they will become emotionally compromised. Now you have a whole lot of stuff you are dealing with that to me is outside of the realm of GMing a healthy game. If you have something happen in the game that is legitimately deadly or dangerous you now have to think twice before allowing it to happen because of a meta-game reaction. The player's reaction will be dictating the content of the game.

That may sound normal, I mean aren't we trying to please the player with the actions of the game? We are and we aren't, because as a game there should be some level of events having a resolution that isn't pure whim or fiat. If you attempt to fully juggle the pleasures and displeasures of every player you will become a puppet of their mood, and that sounds like a recipe for a bad night behind the screen to me. It's all a give and take, and the take part for me as a GM is that I ask to enjoy a Game Space with some randomness and danger, and also to not be browbeat by players who got too attached to a character, to the detriment of probably everyone.

9 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Ah thank you guys. I would have eventually killed someone with this! Your forum actions saved lives today.

In this game, it's really nearly impossible to kill a character accidentally. Getting the crit 141+ requires either many previous crits, or real killer weapons. Or beating the unconscious PC, which should IMO never happen. When NPC damages PC over their WT, and PC falls, NPC should move to next PC, and instead of TPK, the end result is whole group beaten and captured. After that, it's up to GM what happens. I'd most probably imprison PCs, with a small amount of time to escape, as they all have huge bounties from Empire. This of course is situation dependent. But this is a bit off topic already.

2 hours ago, kkuja said:

In this game, it's really nearly impossible to kill a character accidentally. Getting the crit 141+ requires either many previous crits, or real killer weapons. Or beating the unconscious PC, which should IMO never happen. When NPC damages PC over their WT, and PC falls, NPC should move to next PC, and instead of TPK, the end result is whole group beaten and captured. After that, it's up to GM what happens. I'd most probably imprison PCs, with a small amount of time to escape, as they all have huge bounties from Empire. This of course is situation dependent. But this is a bit off topic already.

Beating unconscious PC: I think it's really dependent on the situation. Some enemies are going to coup de grace because of their nature. Animal enemies who are attacking the PC's because they are essentially food are going to attempt to eat anyone who falls and isn't rescued. Also some situations will be deadly because of the situation (acid pit, starfighter crash in vacuum, getting stepped on by an AT AT).

As characters progress down their talent trees they get bonuses to that critical score, more possible successes from higher skill totals, and equipment contributes to this (especially something like disruptors). I also wonder why the Devs themselves have referred to PCs in this game as "Glass Cannons" if what you say is true. There isn't resurrection in the game, so they had to do something to make it compete with D&D on that aspect, but the game itself does not appear to be built for immortal PCs. If it were they would have had a mechanic to spend Destiny Points to invalidate enemy rolls or ignore damage.

As I said in another post, when players are clinging too tight to a character and are experiencing too much bleed you can get the situation where the GM is being held hostage by overzealous players who are looking to have ego-stroke adventures with no real danger. If you have very sensitive players, then an information campaign and consistency in communicating the actual danger may be a good idea. If at any time a real-life personal conflict erupts over fake people getting killed then it's time to stop the game and get it worked out.

On 27.10.2017 at 0:10 PM, Archlyte said:

Beating unconscious PC: I think it's really dependent on the situation. Some enemies are going to coup de grace because of their nature. Animal enemies who are attacking the PC's because they are essentially food are going to attempt to eat anyone who falls and isn't rescued. Also some situations will be deadly because of the situation (acid pit, starfighter crash in vacuum, getting stepped on by an AT AT).

If the GM wants to kill PCs it is always possible and easy, no one is denying that (If nothing else, rock falls). In text you quoted there was one meaningful word which I think you might have skipped, and it changed the meaning of whole discussion. If NPC ACCIDENTALLY makes a coup de grace to PC, then I'm astonished.

I think that in OPs situation problem wasn't he intentionally killed a PC group, at core IMO the problem was that GM got PCs into situation where few PCs died, and that caused animosity at least for one player. Also, problem is that according to RAW those PCs didn't need to die. No crit 141+ was rolled (only rule covered way the PC is killed in RAW), but decisions were made by GM and PCs. Later one player changed his/her mind, and didn't want the PC to die. So, THIS IS NOT RULES PROBLEM (and has nothing to do how easy or hard it is to kill a PC), but group dynamic and social contract problem.

You are absolutely correct about it depending on the situation.

BTW, totally of topic. I hate it when in movies an animal is eating, and then humans interrupt it and it starts to chase humans. Animals don't work that way. Animals don't change larger and unmoving food source to moving and smaller food source.

On 27.10.2017 at 0:10 PM, Archlyte said:

As characters progress down their talent trees they get bonuses to that critical score, more possible successes from higher skill totals, and equipment contributes to this (especially something like disruptors). I also wonder why the Devs themselves have referred to PCs in this game as "Glass Cannons" if what you say is true. There isn't resurrection in the game, so they had to do something to make it compete with D&D on that aspect, but the game itself does not appear to be built for immortal PCs. If it were they would have had a mechanic to spend Destiny Points to invalidate enemy rolls or ignore damage.

If you want to say something, say it, don't beat the bush. So, you are saying, I'm wrong, because DEVs have said something, in somewhere (could you please point me to the source)? DEVs have also said it is hard to kill a PC in this game. (E.g. Order 66 podcast, I don't remember the episode number by heart, but I can dig it up). So, which one is right, devs or devs? Maybe both, because the whole matter is kind of moot. If GM wants to kill PCs he can always to it (I'm speaking only about doing this on purpose), with RAW (stack bonuses, out rules lawyer PCs, throw too powerful or too many enemies against PCs,) or with GM ruling (rock falls everyone dies, AT-AT steps to PC, PC is bleeding and runs out of blood). Please take those examples as hyperboles they are, on the part they are hyperboles.

Someone reading this might think that you want to kill PCs, and I'll do anything to protect them. AFAIK, Neither is truth. And good GMing is somewhere between those two extremities. GM offering challenges to players, and not killing PCs just for fun or by bad luck.

7 hours ago, kkuja said:

If the GM wants to kill PCs it is always possible and easy, no one is denying that (If nothing else, rock falls). In text you quoted there was one meaningful word which I think you might have skipped, and it changed the meaning of whole discussion. If NPC ACCIDENTALLY makes a coup de grace to PC, then I'm astonished.

I think that in OPs situation problem wasn't he intentionally killed a PC group, at core IMO the problem was that GM got PCs into situation where few PCs died, and that caused animosity at least for one player. Also, problem is that according to RAW those PCs didn't need to die. No crit 141+ was rolled (only rule covered way the PC is killed in RAW), but decisions were made by GM and PCs. Later one player changed his/her mind, and didn't want the PC to die. So, THIS IS NOT RULES PROBLEM (and has nothing to do how easy or hard it is to kill a PC), but group dynamic and social contract problem.

You are absolutely correct about it depending on the situation.

BTW, totally of topic. I hate it when in movies an animal is eating, and then humans interrupt it and it starts to chase humans. Animals don't work that way. Animals don't change larger and unmoving food source to moving and smaller food source.

If you want to say something, say it, don't beat the bush. So, you are saying, I'm wrong, because DEVs have said something, in somewhere (could you please point me to the source)? DEVs have also said it is hard to kill a PC in this game. (E.g. Order 66 podcast, I don't remember the episode number by heart, but I can dig it up). So, which one is right, devs or devs? Maybe both, because the whole matter is kind of moot. If GM wants to kill PCs he can always to it (I'm speaking only about doing this on purpose), with RAW (stack bonuses, out rules lawyer PCs, throw too powerful or too many enemies against PCs,) or with GM ruling (rock falls everyone dies, AT-AT steps to PC, PC is bleeding and runs out of blood). Please take those examples as hyperboles they are, on the part they are hyperboles.

Someone reading this might think that you want to kill PCs, and I'll do anything to protect them. AFAIK, Neither is truth. And good GMing is somewhere between those two extremities. GM offering challenges to players, and not killing PCs just for fun or by bad luck.

I said that the way I said it because I wasn't sure of the veracity of what I was saying. I was certainly under the false impression that 3x negative Wound Threshold was death in the beginning of this thread, so I did think that death was that much more likely than it actually is in the system. I was listening to a podcast when one of the devs did refer to the PC's as Glass Cannons, but to be honest I don't remember which one. I wasn't attempting any kind of written device intended to be a feint or fake, I just wasn't that confident that I could demonstrate what I was saying. I figured that this was a light enough conversation that it wasn't really all that necessary.

I totally agree about the animal thing, that is a great point.

On fiat and player death:

Yes, If a GM wants to kill a player and has nothing in their mind to stop them, it's done easy as pie. There are GMs out there who are closet sadists who will kill players simply for the fun of killing players. TTRPGs are a great way to get fish in a barrel because what you are doing when you set out to be a killer DM is to play a strategy numbers game that you cannot lose.

That is very different than trying to simulate lethality in good faith.

Also I should mention that I don't fudge dice. I tell players up front that I don't do it, and that in either direction I allow the dice to determine what is going to happen. The only way for me to kill someone by mistake would be to somehow throw them up against something that was way more powerful than I perceived it to be, but I usually keep encounters pretty easy for the purpose of avoiding that situation. If they kill the main villain in one hit, then so be it. I prefer to play from the simulation angle so I don't care if death occurs really. To me it accurately models the lethality of the setting. That doesn't mean I'm happy when it happens or that I wanted it to happen, it just means that I accept it, and I expect the players to do the same.

5 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Yes, If a GM wants to kill a player and has nothing in their mind to stop them, it's done easy as pie. There are GMs out there who are closet sadists who will kill players simply for the fun of killing players. TTRPGs are a great way to get fish in a barrel because what you are doing when you set out to be a killer DM is to play a strategy numbers game that you cannot lose.

Hopefully most stick to killing characters though.

@Imperial Stormtrooper At this point I believe that the real issue is that you lost the trust and respect of your players. This is an assumption sure, but the fact that the player who wanted his character back now just wants to play a completely different game, coupled with the other two players deciding that they don't want their characters back even when offered, speaks to my assumption. Plus your description of the situation. You've come to the realization that you should not have forcibly put the characters in an unwinnable situation and if you apologize and explain your mistake, this should go a long way toward regaining their trust and respect.

In the same vein, although you like the "reality" of deciding to go right or left in an unfamiliar area (in this case, the sewers), you admitted that you weren't prepared to run them there. So I can assume that you lacked real life sewer maps for reference, that you didn't have a clear idea of how water reclamation and sanitation works in Star Wars, that you didn't know what chemicals would be present in the water, and that you hadn't watched every sewer scene you could find in Star Wars media. I don't mean to be pedantic and this may seem facetious, but my point is that is you are already lacking a great many details that will add realism to the scene, so why be a stickler for direction? In a narrative game like this one, you can simulate reality well enough with a statement of intention from the players and a die roll: i.e.

"What do you guys want to accomplish here in the sewers?"

"We want to find out where our adversaries went"

"Okay, you don't see any clues at first. Roll Streetwise (Cunning) to navigate your way down here". Wait for roll. "Okay an hour has passed and you still can't find any clues, but you've explored this area". Draw a map of where they went, including any left or right directions you think are important.

Even players who like realism as much as you do will get frustrated if 20 minutes or more of precious game time is spent exploring someplace that has no importance and nothing happens. You can waste the character's time all you want, but don't waste your player's time. Frustrated players make stupid, rebellious decisions and then blame you (I've been on both sides, because I was either gm'ing poorly or I was getting frustrated as a player).

Also, I highly recommend against sending extremely powerful characters against new players or new characters. In a new game, even experienced role-players may be unsure of their characters capabilities within the game system, but after a few games in their characters' shoes, players begin to understand how powerful they are (and aren't) and what they can stand up to. Your players may not have known they were completely outclassed in that combat encounter (especially if they were silently frustrated from the sewers), but after a few regular normal combat encounters, they might have understood what Rivals with vibro-axes and 5 minions really means in terms of power.

Now having written that, you might have still salvaged the situation if you hadn't had the enemies all burst in at once. They rolled a Triumph with Despair, right? So you could have told them that the enemies are already here in the building (or the vicinity of the building), but the Triumph is that they don't know exactly where the PC's are. Then, because they are new, tell that it looks like they are outnumbered two to one and heavily outclassed in a straight up fight. This would give them the chance to try to sneak past the enemies, create a distraction, pigeonhole or ambush them one at a time so that they don't have to fight them all at once, create traps, or yes, even escape through the window.

I wouldn't go so far. I would also refuse to get a character back if I already assumed he/she was dead. Nothing to do with confidence in the GM. We all make mistakes. And as said, a good session zero is important, but apart from that I think you are good to go.

A pair of players can work very well for a fringer storyline. Han and Chewie are just that, after all. Ask the players the kind of stories they want to play. Tramp freighters, bounty hunters, exploration, political intrigues in the Imperial senate, jedi self discovery, a rebel cell working to get ino, or to blow things up.... whatever. And then build the matching characters for that. And off you go

15 hours ago, Darzil said:

Hopefully most stick to killing characters though.

Players' characters. I was in a hurry.

11 hours ago, bloody malth said:

@Imperial Stormtrooper At this point I believe that the real issue is that you lost the trust and respect of your players. This is an assumption sure, but the fact that the player who wanted his character back now just wants to play a completely different game, coupled with the other two players deciding that they don't want their characters back even when offered, speaks to my assumption.

Why is it not assumed that the two players who were ok with the characters dying felt it was germane to the situation? You are really slanting this on the side of everyone playing in that game being of the mind that the character they made is "the one." I have plenty of friends who would not want to revive the characters because they feel like that moment has passed and it cheapens the game to bring the characters back "just because." I just do not understand this thing where once a player has a character in the game they are like a tenant who cannot be evicted no matter what the cause (save for 141 crit, but I'm beginning to doubt that even that would be enough).

On 10/31/2017 at 7:54 AM, Archlyte said:

Why is it not assumed that the two players who were ok with the characters dying felt it was germane to the situation?

Because that is not my opinion of the situation. Based on several factors: the "newness" of the gm to narrative role-playing and role-playing in general, the 20 minute scene in the sewers where nothing happened, the overpowered force of enemies that they had no chance to win against yet were immediately thrown into combat with because of the Despair, the unwillingness of anyone to talk about it face to face afterwards, the abandonment of the campaign and gm for something else, and the central point of this thread, that one PC wanted their character "resurrected", seem like very strong indicators that the PC's were frustrated as a group, not just the one player. As I wrote before, this is my assumption , based on my personal experience, because I don't know of any data sets to reference for player behavior.

You have a different opinion. That's fine, I wanted it to come across in my above post that I did not believe that I was correct in my assumption with 100% certainty. I too have friends that would not bring a character back if they felt it cheapened the game. I also have other friends that would move heaven and earth to keep their characters alive and would charge the gates of **** to bring their dead characters back.

15 hours ago, bloody malth said:

Because that is not my opinion of the situation. Based on several factors: the "newness" of the gm to narrative role-playing and role-playing in general, the 20 minute scene in the sewers where nothing happened, the overpowered force of enemies that they had no chance to win against yet were immediately thrown into combat with because of the Despair, the unwillingness of anyone to talk about it face to face afterwards, the abandonment of the campaign and gm for something else, and the central point of this thread, that one PC wanted their character "resurrected", seem like very strong indicators that the PC's were frustrated as a group, not just the one player. As I wrote before, this is my assumption , based on my personal experience, because I don't know of any data sets to reference for player behavior.

You have a different opinion. That's fine, I wanted it to come across in my above post that I did not believe that I was correct in my assumption with 100% certainty. I too have friends that would not bring a character back if they felt it cheapened the game. I also have other friends that would move heaven and earth to keep their characters alive and would charge the gates of **** to bring their dead characters back.

I was mainly wondering why you were weighting it that way, it could be many things and while you did say it was an assumption I wanted to know why you were making that assumption as well as putting it out there that it was just as probable that the opposite was true.

@Archlyte Yeah, you were right to ask me to back up my assumptions. After I read through my original post I realized that in my zeal to express my ideas about fair gm'ing, I had glossed over the reasons I felt that the post was needed in the first place.

13 hours ago, bloody malth said:

@Archlyte Yeah, you were right to ask me to back up my assumptions. After I read through my original post I realized that in my zeal to express my ideas about fair gm'ing, I had glossed over the reasons I felt that the post was needed in the first place.

Oh ok thank you. Yeah I thought your post was interesting but I was curious as to how you arrived at your idea for what you felt was going on in the OP's situation. I agree that it is equally probable that they just wanted to move on but weren't happy about the way it went down. For me, I always worry when a player gets so attached to the character that the character becomes more important than anything else, and I mean in an exaggerated manner. The GM then starts to be hobbled by the attachment the player has to their character because the character is sacrosanct and the story cannot be served by the character, but rather everything must serve the need for the character to be in place and usually growing in power/influence/safety.

@Archlyte I should be clear that I agree with you wholeheartedly when it comes to character death. My suggestions above are not meant to be taken as a way for a gm to cheat death for his or her players. In a game in which combat is one of the main conflicts (this includes most rpg's), there must usually be the real threat of death and failure for success and the rewards to have any depth of meaning. Most anything else is just kids' candy: sweet but unsatisfying. There are some exceptions of course (I once ran a Changeling game where the PC's were effectively immortal and I used a partially homebrewed system of slowly increasing insanity to replace the threat of death. And they could still fail, of course. But this digression is off topic), but some of my favorite memories as a player are when we escaped what looked like certain death by our wits and the skin of our teeth, or when we eked out a partial success against tough opposition and we had unfinished business and still alive enemies to look forward to later.

By contrast, some of my most unsatisfying moments in gaming were when I could tell the gm had started pulling his punches, usually because our opposition was much deadlier than he anticipated, but sometimes because it served his story or because one of the other pc's was too attached to their character and the character became "sacrosanct" as you describe.

On 10/19/2017 at 5:04 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.

This is the original post. It describes a near TPK, during Session 1 of a new campaign. The energy that went into creating the characters may well have exceeded that of the actual play. I can empathize with players whose characters die on Day 1, before having a chance to be realized. Whatever it was that appealed about the character concept is now lost, or else must be replaced with a 2.0 doppelganger.

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

Let me sum it up, since it will probably help. A political leader on this planet was assassinated, the PCs think the assassin might have gone into the sewers. 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."

As the second Despair and the Triumph were rolled together, I would have reversed the order in which they were interpreted. A Triumph which is immediately negated by a Despair, is no triumph at all. A Despair, immediately followed by a Triumph, however... could have made all the difference.

I'd say you're doing Despairs and Triumphs wrong entirely if they can negate each other's effects. There's a reason the symbols don't cancel.

I also need to post a bit of a correction. I think in some of my posts I was eager to point out the need for danger and it seemed as though I was advocating for callousness. I think that it is very important to be able to be sensitive to the players, but my arguments were supposed to be about the mechanism of death and danger more than the player interface. I still think that you must simulate danger faithfully or pay the price, but you don't need to be a jerk to your players to do that. I think some of my earlier posts were flavored to indicate jerk behavior when my intention was not to be the poster boy for insensitive GMs.

On 11/5/2017 at 7:20 AM, Tom Cruise said:

I'd say you're doing Despairs and Triumphs wrong entirely if they can negate each other's effects. There's a reason the symbols don't cancel.

Hmmm, I didn't notice that I had done that. I'll have to pay more attention in the future, thanks to both of you who pointed it out.

Also, there's a chance we'll be getting back to Star Wars this weekend, and I think I've come up with a decent way for continuing without changing too much of what happened last time, and allowing for a one-time restoration of the character in question. The player who wants their character back was captured and taken to a nearby planet (in the same system), the survivor from last time tracks them there (I'm going to skip the tracking part, sort of like in episode VI), and one of the new PCs has blackmail as an obligation so they're blackmailed by TBD (probably someone involved with the Hutts) into attending an "event" at the same location that the captive PC was taken to.

I do have one question, since what I was thinking would introduce a lot of new NPCs. Is it possible to introduce too many major NPCs in a single session, or does it just depend on the campaign?