JCC Amph Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies - The Tabletop RPG Discussion Thread

It is

... but I abused it first as the player of a ruthless necromancer, so when came my turn to DM, the rest of the table knew I was liable to do that...

 

Thinking of DMing a Star Wars RPG game.

I have Foundry if anyone's interested, though this is currently the "germ" of an idea here.

 

I played and ran a lot of SW RPG back in the day. WEG d6 was my favorite system, much simpler than d20, and easy to make a judgement call and roll some dice in oddball situations (which my players loved to throw themselves into).

 

I highly recommend the comic Knights of the Dinner Table, which began back in 1990 and is still going to this day.

 

@Jedi Merkurian
But in 3 rounds your party friends will often have time to save you while you are rolling death saves. I was watching Critical Role and I think that this is what happened, twice in a single combat.
A player got unconcious and failed 1 death save, but then another player used their turn to heal them.

 

"Don't worry, profusely bleeding teammate, basking in my divine radiance will help you not succumb to your wounds."
"Couldn't you just... use your magic healing hands? I can't feel my spleen. I think that orc has it."
"God helps those who help themselves."
"Your god gives hints to people who donate at least 5 GP at the temple! And gave you healing powers! Use your magic!"
"COURAGE, MAN! COURAGE!"

 

In the earliest of dsys, zero hit points meant death. You could start with one hit point.
Also, if you were poisoned, most poisons meant death if you didn't pass a "save" - which was 25-30% chance at low levels.

 

For the experienced DMs, how easy is it to die in your campaigns ?

 

Most times it comes down to stupidity or really bad luck, but it happens.

Also, Spare The Dying is a good spell.

 

I tend to be more forgiving in campaigns. At the least, make it an epic death.
It depends on the system, too. Games like Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia and Alien are expected to be more lethal.

 

One-offs were by the book, campaigns I was usually willing to extend a life line unless it was the end in which case… well…

Actually, nostalgia time, one campaign ended because I was moving, so myself and the other rotating GM cooked up this massive plot line where his character turned evil and tried to destroy the world as a sacrifice to his evil god (which seemed like an epic level blackguard-y thing to do at the time). Almost everyone died stopping him, most of the kingdoms we had interacted with were totally destroyed, and then the, like, two surviving party members shocked the rest of us by deciding to activate the obligatory doomsday device. So later on they apparently set a campaign on the ruined world millennia in the future. High school campaigns were wild.

 

Terminology to be aware of - the dreaded TPK, or "Total Party Kill".

 

I almost had one of those as a player in a one-shot. It was at a Halloween party with my tabletop club, so a spooky-themed one-shot that the DM was improvising from nothing but a sketch of a town map. One party member died halfway through to a bunch of skeletons, while the other three of us made it through a banshee to the final battle with a death knight. One died quickly, and the other two (including mine) were down and making death saves at the same time. The other guy hit a nat 1 and died, while I managed to make three successes. The DM let me get up with 1 HP, and I managed to kill the death knight with one final heroic attack, restoring the town to normal and resurrecting the other three. To be fair, we were only 10th level, but the DM weakened the death knight by taking away its hellfire orb and a couple of the more powerful spells on its list.

 

Honestly, I've only gotten into tabletop RPGs recently so I don't have much of a "reference" for these things and can't form my own opinions on which one is better.

That said: I have high hopes for the upcoming Star Wars RPG edition that's coming up later.

Whenever that will be. Hopefully soon.

I honestly have no interest in playing "old" TTRPGs.

 

Found myself in two tabletop RPG groups.

I mean, I was excited at first, but that means I have to coordinate my time with two of them.

 

First world problems, dude.

 

When I ran a table who were here for munchkinism, it was very easy to die. With RP-oriented tables, I tended to fudge around lethal dice rolls and to have a few reasons for NPCs to be merciful, but dumb actions still meant death.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath on the new Star Wars RPG coming out any time soon.
What do you consider an 'old' RPG?

 

Honestly? TTRPGs from the 20th century or even 2000s decade.

 

We now live in the days of the Sarge Meme Machine ^^

 

I honestly can't see them.

I just see "