Re: How gloomy and desolate do you make your settings when beginning a campaign?
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 10:45 pm
Great question and tough to answer.
I know of no perfect answer for this question.
For me it depends upon the players.
Some power players want to play demi-gods or the something like superman.
Then they feel like the game is rigged against them when the only thing that can survive their attacks and beat them is a Splugorth or ancient Dragon. As a GM this honestly feels like a player created box.
1. Make an over powered character.
2. Pick fights with unarmed vagabonds and grind them up. Complain its boring.
3. Get the attention of an Adult dragon.
4. Run away.
5. IF the can't rob it or kill it they don't want anything to do with it.
But the RARE player that plays one of the adventurers, then I gear them up.
Rogue Scholars with magic scrolls and amulets of see the invisible.
Unless the players active seek horrible places I engineer the adventure such that their is always ways to survive and / or escape:
-a buoy or some piece of wood such in the water
-an oasis in the desert
-the remains of an adventure party that didn't make it to resupply with MRE's or dried food and water or something
-Basically I don't kill characters, they kill themselves during high risk or idiotic things.
-Even in the harshest environments there are ways to survive.
-ONE solitary time an adventure was playing some kind of monk. Was in the city. For some reason he was broke. Had a chance to rob. Would not. Got Xp for playing in character. Scavenged the trash for some things. Rewarded with Xp and got as resonable a thing as could be expected.
Finally, he used his super high begging skill.
His face twisted at it. It was so super hard for him. I felt like really rewarding him so a rich old lady came by and gave him as much money as he needed. It was so hard for him I real felt it was his O.C.C. character would do and he did it without braking his principles or violence. Practically leveled him up.
I think of it as my job to create the darkness.
The players to light up the darkness with their hope.
If they make good decisions I reward them for it.
I know of no perfect answer for this question.
For me it depends upon the players.
Some power players want to play demi-gods or the something like superman.
Then they feel like the game is rigged against them when the only thing that can survive their attacks and beat them is a Splugorth or ancient Dragon. As a GM this honestly feels like a player created box.
1. Make an over powered character.
2. Pick fights with unarmed vagabonds and grind them up. Complain its boring.
3. Get the attention of an Adult dragon.
4. Run away.
5. IF the can't rob it or kill it they don't want anything to do with it.
But the RARE player that plays one of the adventurers, then I gear them up.
Rogue Scholars with magic scrolls and amulets of see the invisible.
Unless the players active seek horrible places I engineer the adventure such that their is always ways to survive and / or escape:
-a buoy or some piece of wood such in the water
-an oasis in the desert
-the remains of an adventure party that didn't make it to resupply with MRE's or dried food and water or something
-Basically I don't kill characters, they kill themselves during high risk or idiotic things.
-Even in the harshest environments there are ways to survive.
-ONE solitary time an adventure was playing some kind of monk. Was in the city. For some reason he was broke. Had a chance to rob. Would not. Got Xp for playing in character. Scavenged the trash for some things. Rewarded with Xp and got as resonable a thing as could be expected.
Finally, he used his super high begging skill.
His face twisted at it. It was so super hard for him. I felt like really rewarding him so a rich old lady came by and gave him as much money as he needed. It was so hard for him I real felt it was his O.C.C. character would do and he did it without braking his principles or violence. Practically leveled him up.
I think of it as my job to create the darkness.
The players to light up the darkness with their hope.
If they make good decisions I reward them for it.