Re: [HOE] Campaign Lethality WAS: Strain-based Martial Artists

["Bob Fletcher" <bobfletch@erols.com>]

>I feel the death of a character should only happen on three ways.
>1) Hes a really idiot and does it to him self aka "Sure I'm psyker with 2
>points of strain left, I can take 6 Automatons"


    I would definitely agree.  The character that died in Deadlands was
actually killed while our posse was stranded in Hell on Earth (a crossover
sort of thing).  He ran up to an automaton, stuck his pistol in the grenade
port and pulled the trigger.  And he expected to survive it.  He ended up
bleeding to death because the Blessed in the group was healing another
mortally injured character and couldn't stop in the middle of the miracle.
Nobody was sorry to see him go, though.

>2) Its story related aka Heroic sacrifices that kind of thing


    We've had one of those, where one of our former players was in town and
wanted to get in a couple games.  He ended up sacrificing himself to further
the plot, according to something he'd worked out with the Marshal.

>3) To Reassure them that they can die aka Kill one player(usually someone
>who is geting borded with there guy) every few sessions to let them know
>that they aren't immortal


    I don't have a problem with this, we just haven't had anyone get bored
with their character yet.  I'm probably too attached to my Deadlands
character, actually. ;-)

>No body has fun when there characters keep die every session. But you have
>to make sure it happens or else characters will walk all over the G.M.  I,
>as a G.M., don't tend to find pleasure in killing of the entire party. I
had
>a friend who ran shadowrun who killed of every player every other session.
>We went through 10 guys in two months.  He couldn't understand why people
>didn't want to play anymore.  If characters keep dying then there nothing
to
>look forward to.


    We've never had any problems with the players walking all over the GM.
Everyone in the group is pretty close, and respect what the GM is trying to
do.  In addition, neither of the Marshals have a problem screwing over the
posse as much as possible (having their only vehicle throw a rod, their
favorite gun get FUBAR'd).  It's my job as a Marshal to make sure my players
have fun, so I try to make things as challenging as possible.