I want to preface this by saying that I'm a very experienced DM but still feel I have a lot of room to improve and would like all kinda of criticism. My last gaming session ended pretty poorly, in that a character death led to two of my players vowing to never play any game I hosted ever again. I just want some feedback on it as I've gotten some pretty mixed opinions.
The party was traveling through an uncharted part of a jungle in what was already described to the players as possibly the most dangerous place in the entire setting. I had previously told the party that this expedition would be a meat grinder so I ass pulled some extra ways for them to resurrect dead characters. I knew that they wouldn't have fun having characters mowed down over and over again, but I didn't want to downplay the danger and excitement of the setting. Everyone seemed to be on the same page so far.
One player in the party insisted that his character be evil and every so often run off to do evil things without the party knowing about it. In this specific scenario he wanted to break off form the party while they made camp to go sacrifice a magic item to his evil demon overlord. The guide that the party had with them had just finished telling him that even running off to take a piss was pretty dangerous because the area was infested with monsters. The dude proceed to ignore all warnings and sneak off out of sight of the rest of the party, unsurprisingly he ran into a large cadre of goblins (I random encountered it) and was killed almost instantly. The goblins in question are also not ordinary goblins, but are the apex predators of the jungle in this setting, having invisibility, and advanced warfare tactics, they basically troll around in warbands and successfully murder everything that isn't green. The player was outraged and insisted that he was killed off unfairly and that for even putting him in this situation I was a bad DM. I mainly just want some input on the situation
Controversial character death
TLDR
>Guy runs off from entire party in known dangerous area
>Dies horrible death
>Says I'm a bad DM for not facilitating his fun and rerolling a bad encounter.
So this guy ran off on his own in a jungle teeming with monsters and blamed you?
Keep doing what your doing op less faggots in the hobby the better
>insisted that his character be evil
>killed almost instantly
>player was outraged
You're a good DM. Dummies gonna dummy.
I would have given starker warnings than that, including OOC warnings. However, Evil player sounds like a fool, and probably would have bitched at you for railroading if you'd given those kinds of warnings.
I suspect he's one of those spoiled, entitled players who want to be coated in plot armour and never really be at risk of having their character killed. It sounds like he could have been ressurrected anyway so he's throwing a hissy fit over nothing. If you 'lost' a player like that then I'd say that's something to celebrate.
He actually did bitch at me for railroading for something similar. He actually did get resurrected right after that encounter which cost the party basically all the gold they had, which sucks now that hes not playing anymore
No, it doesn't suck. Use combined player and DM fiat. Make a special retcon for the exceptional circumstances of severe player asshattery.The party never resurrected him. He ran off and got eaten by goblins. Never even found his cracked and gnawed bones. Everybody wins.
If you give fair warning, but the player ignored you, then the other players will learn not to fuck around when you say "That is not a good idea." or "That will likely get your character killed."
If it's a fair death and they can be revived, than it shouldn't be a problem.
Assuming this is a fair and balanced story: You don't give any sign of being a bad DM. Sounds like a bunch of sour grapes from edge player.
Big question is, edge player left because he got shot himself in the ass. And it was a fatal wound because that's where his brains were.
Why'd player 2 leave? Some sort of edge player labor union?
>ass pulled some extra ways for them to resurrect dead characters. I knew that they wouldn't have fun having characters mowed down over and over again, but I didn't want to downplay the danger and excitement of the setting.
Well you sure as fucked failed on that part. Resurrection immediately cheapens death no matter what way you go about it. If you're going to make it common you need to challenge your players in different ways, otherwise you're just inconveniencing them and cheapening up the setting as a whole (oh whoops the evil bad man is dead, and wait, no he isn't because one of his cronies just walked on down to the resurrection mart (tm) and now he knows who we are and why we want to stop him).
I'll fully support the death of the evil player for his actions. Probably should have played up the possibility of the hyper gobbos if they were so high up on the settings totem pole though. If I were in that circumstances I'd be most upset about being killed by a bunch of tucker's invisible *minor enemy I bet you thought would be a minor enemy* more so than anything else. Also why was there even a body/something to resurrect after a predator encounter? Surely they'd fairy off his corpse for food?
Maybe work up to putting the party in the most dangerous location in the setting, full of the most heightened apex predator instead of starting them there. Give them a chance to acclimate to the setting first. I mean where do you intend to go from here? They're already dealing with the setting's worst. What are they going to kill next? Got yourself a dragonball z pacing problem now.
the second player left because he was cajoled into trading his ring and necklace to the goblins to get the body back
>players leaves a game because he decided in character to give up his precious +2 ring of cuckoldry and no amount of dick can fill the empty space on his character sheet where it once was.
You're not losing anything important.
I think you should've retconned that when the other guy left
Only criticism here.
This. Don't penalize the party for one guy's kneejerk antics who isn't even there anymore.
There is like two ways to do a good evil character without playing an Evil campaign.
1. Setting him up to be a Big Bad where he betrays the party and becomes an NPC once they get the McGuffin. This can be great, it's lots of fun for the DM and the player as well, as they make a new character to defeat the character they've created. And they probably also get to help design some of the encounters and how the Big Bad works, giving the DM "well my character would do x" advice and then getting to see his Big Bad in action.
2. "Everyone else sucks and should die but you guys are alright." Evil cunts who still value friendship and comradery. They may not be the most affable member of the party, but they're still part of the party and work with them rather than against them.
That Guy was neither, it seems.
Seems to me that he ignored your warnings to go be evil and you had the balls to go through with it, which is something that a lot of folks wouldn't have the guts to do.
You did retcon it later, it seems, but I would say undoing the retcon would be the wisest move.
yeah, i'd retcon the gold lost, and if player two comes back retcon him giving his shit away to get the body, but otherwise you did everything right.
The only thing you did wrong was not give a more firm, hardline warning. Otherwise, you did everything you should have. If a player is going to insist on being an idiot, then they will probably die. A "bad" DM is not one that doesn't let every player have their own entire plot.
There is one more.
>I like killing people 'cuz it's fun, but killing people that other people agree I should kill lets me kill people longer and not be a poor as fuck outlaw
A faint relative of your 2, just with money and/or self preservation over camaraderie. This can lead into your 2, but doesn't have to.
Story time!
I was a player in a party and one of our dudes was like OPs evil guy. He would sneak off to read from his super Evil book made of skin with blood n edgy shit. He was gana kill our main guest NPC for Satan or w/e. Two of our party members where hammer wielding clerics who beat his skull in.
Story X2. I had a DM warn me i was doing something that would probably insta kill me. I did it anyway cuz my character would have (follow an NPC who was obviously going to die being dumb) the party was devastated by the character loss. But I still stood by it and I was content with my RP.
Yeah, I also think OP could have had a more obvious "The thing you're about to do is pretty stupid, and your character is aware that it is pretty stupid. Do you want to proceed?" Beyond that, their mistakes are on them. A player insisting that they walk off a cliff doesn't give them the right to bitch when they go splat.
See? This is why you get hired by the same people the heroes get hired by, and don't go on about your skin book. You still get to kill fucktons of people, the clerics don't try to smite you, the entire party rejoices when the paladin has to join a new group, and you get to screw with the minds of your party by making them question their Lawful Good Murderhobo ways.
Idk. I had fun butting the hammer to his head...it was me I was the Cleric.
Putting aside blame on GM vs PC, I think it's a shame that RPG systems handle freedom so incredibly poorly. Splitting the party should not grind the game to a halt, but RPGs were designed with a mentality of dungeon crawl exclusively to be lazy
I remember this post from the other side, nice reference.
Out of curiosity, how would you improve upon that system?
>understands the risk
>knows result will probably be bad
>does it anyway because role beats roll
>result is bad as expected
>doesn't cry like a fucking baby
my nigga. I love DM'ing for people like you.
>Splitting the party should not grind the game to a halt,
Well tough shit, that's not the fault of any given ttrpg, that's the fault of them being ran by humans. If you split the party you're splitting the attention of the gm, so you're either going to get things slowing down, or the quality on both sides will suffer.
If you want a seamless experience in and out of the party, you're going to need multiple gms running in parallel yet also still somehow able to remain constantly on the same page as one another.
>exclusively to be lazy
Yeah just make the DM exposit for 2-6 different settings per round for HOURS and slowly watch as the joy for gaming drains from his face and his brain fucking implodes.
If the party splits into three groups and one of those groups decides to sleep, meanwhile one group is fighting a horde of bandits and the other group is off gambling somewhere. The fuck would you even do?
That's a question for /gdg/ threads but I do have a much more elastic and dynamic exploration system than the garbage that it is D&D. You just have to start with the assumption that the world is a place, not a cardboard set for a railroad tour.
Here's a hint: allow people to depart from the group only with a specified goal and certain parameters, then give updates and prompts at intervals. No need to lazily kill and railroad players. The system should assist with this process, and if it doesn't I can't really blame GMs for not figuring out a custom system. I blame the system creators.
user, you can hide behind the dice in such occassions; tell the player OC that he will have to roll on random encounter, have him roll the dice, and have the die kill him for stupid shit.
Like someone in OSR or gamedev said, can't remember which, as long as you have dice on the table you can blame mishaps on them instead on you. I guess you play behind a screen and they don't trust you; either build trust or roll in the open when the stupid PC is most likely gonna get fucked.
Having dice out in the open, when concerning players that bring about bad luck upon themselves by acting dumb, is a shield for you. Next time when you're faced with a similar situation, have the player roll on his own encounter table, giving him the illusion of "controlling his own fate".
Having a DM screen is a shield for the story, and that's okay and valid depending on your DMing preference.
neither is purely better or worse, both are subjective and are tailored to the group at hand, and instead of arguing which one to use, know when to use either
>players leaves a game because he decided in character to give up his precious +2 ring of cuckoldry and no amount of dick can fill the empty space on his character sheet where it once was.
Here. Take this ring.
Oh shit, I forgot that it's a necklace, not a ring. Well that ruins the whole joke.
Let me play devil's advocate and say that it's *possible* that the way things worked in the past, and the way the GM portrayed shit in this circumstance led the player to think shit would be fine, or at least something short of fatal. I'm not saying that's what happened, or even that it's the most likely thing, but even if the relatively damning description OP gives is accurate, one could construct a scenario where it's still largely his fault. It's really hard to give a fully informed judgment on a game and group you have no firsthand exposure to.
Fairly or not, I could see the player thinking that invisible goblins were the GM cheating to teach him a lesson. I mean "invisible goblins attack you" could easily be a "rocks fall, you die" sort of thing. And even if they weren't in this circumstance, if that sort of thing (a horde of enemies with invisibility or some other powerful magic suddenly showing up) is rare or unheard in the game, you could see how they would jump to conclusions. And maybe the OP's body language or tone of voice suggested an element of "this is what you get", which would clearly tend to piss somebody off.
I'm not saying that OP is to blame, and it certainly looks like the player poked a bee hive with a stick, then threw a fit when he got stung, but it's hard to be sure.
>Some sort of edge player labor union?
lol
What the everliving fuck. Feel bad that this guy put up with this bullshit.
I have had players one shotted from traps. Death is part of this game.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had a game with 37 people and 5 GMs. Working where you'd have (5)ish people at a table with 1 GM. Then we would take a moment to organize and our GM would disuss with us what our players would know and deliver letters from other players. Then we would all go to the other tables based on how our RP at our table went and continue from their.
I was a tranny princess (character was female but needed to be an Heir for the throne.) I forced a rich blonde to marry me and kept her locked away (she kept trying to kill me and wasn't subtle about it) and I accidentally made peace with 2 other kingdoms. It just so happen the 3 of the standing kingdoms fell cept mine, an ally, and a enemy due to some Cathullu cult that only 4-5 players knew about. My kindom lived cuz we killed out cultist by mistake.
Good game out of 10
I have never had a problem with any system and the non-sence your bitching about. As a DM i make a world and the players can accept the consequences of going it alone.
If this happened as you told it, the player was a tremendous That Guy, and you did nothing wrong.
Be glad he's gone from your games.
Talk to the guy who traded, and ask if he is leaving because of your actions, or because he traded for the corpse and that player left.
If it is the former explain to him that actions have consequences in your world, HOWEVER because that player left you are willing to retcon the plot to when they made camp that night.
Be sure to drive home that you are being especially flexible and they will not be receiving an asspull like this for anything except the extenuating OOC events that happened.
Either way I would retcon in, even if the 2nd player does want to come back. Have the story be that player two wandered into the jungle after the first guy and never came back. If you are feeling extra generous have that character leave some of their equipment at the camp