RE: [DL] keeping players alive

["RainGod _" <xotzil@hotmail.com>]

>The point of terror/horror isn't the certainty of death.  It's the 
>considerable probability of death combined with the hope of survival and 
>triumph.  I put a lot of effort into building the personalities of my 
>characters.  If I realize that all that work will be wasted before the 
>night is over, I'm not going to put that much effort into playing the 
>character.  I'm also not going to play in that GM's group very long either.
>
>
>
>JohnTFS

Ah...someone who's never experienced the joy of slowly losing one's marbles 
until finally succumbing to enough madness to, just when the party thinks 
they're going to survive, begin gibbering and ululating "Hastur Hastur 
Hastur!" and turning either into sashimi or an NPC.

One of my two favourite deaths. Using myself as a human time bomb to take 
out a werejaguar we had little hope of managing to defeat is the other.

Both of these were near the end of one marathon session of gaming. 
Admittedly, one of them was Cthulhu, but the other one was Deadlands.

Ultimately, you're not going to "waste" your time with your character if you 
had fun playing him/her. If he dies, did you really have any less fun 
playing him?

Sometimes, you're just going to be outmatched. Take Tomb of Iuchiban from 
AEG as an example. I've run that a few times, and I've ALWAYS precursored it 
by telling my players "You're going to die here. If you don't, I've done 
this wrong. Trust me." And without fail, I've gotten snickers of disbelief 
from them. Those snickers stop in a hurry when the first samurai loses an 
arm in the first room.

What did they THINK was going to happen? This tomb was built centuries ago 
to hold in the most evil sorceror on the planet, and to keep his minions OUT 
and/or dead; if they [the players] manage to get in...why should they get 
any farther than anyone else?

Some of PEG's adventures (and a goodly chunk of Chaosium and Pagan's)are 
like this. Sad, but true. The Weird West is a dangerous place. Your players 
should be scared. Grit just means they can raise their head to look the 
beasties in the face after soiling their undies. It doesn't provide a 
get-out-of-dry-cleaning-free card.

Heh. And the point of horror isn't a certainty of death? Tell that to the 
blonde girl who gets brutally defenstrated at the beginning of almost every 
horror movie I've ever seen.

:-)

Be seeing you...

--Jacques (Chris' friend)

"Will a broken skeleton key open a broken door?"


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