To Kill or Not to Kill?

PartyPanda

Hello again all!

Sorry, this is going to require a bit of background before I launch into the question...

Ok, first off, I'm a big softie. I have a tendency to run "cinematic" games where I rarely kill off PCs unless they are really begging for it out of sheer stupidity or they've thrown themselves into a situation where death is dramatically appropriate. This style of gaming works really well with my group, because most of them are actors/theater students and they really get into their character's heads and behave like actual people who are afraid of dying. I've had to institute time limits on occasion because they spend so much time planning on how to keep their characters alive before they go into a fight!

I feel as though the downside of this is that tension is slightly lessened, because they know I'm not killing anyone unless they "ask for it."

So my current dilemma, I have one character who is in love with an NPC and refused to take her into battle with him, even though she was more than willing to go if he had asked. I had brought this NPC (and another female NPC) in specifically to help in this battle, because the boss character is a misogynist with a vulnerability to women and the PC party is made of 5 males and 1 female.

Now while my evil inner GM is glad they made the fight harder for themselves, I did drop the hint that this character has a severe dislike of women. Their reason for leaving the two women behind was that they thought it was "too dangerous" for them to come along, yet they also engineered a rather violent distraction in the town they left the women in. The PC who really wanted to leave her behind is doing so because he believes that this is the girl he's going to marry due to a glimpse he had of the future.

I'm thinking of killing the romantic interest NPC offscreen during the fight in the town as an emotional sucker punch, both as a "you can't control the future" lesson and as a "dude, you totally missed the huge clue I waved in front of your face" lesson. My question to my fellow GMs is (1) is this too much of a douchey move since he didn't even have a *chance* to save her onscreen (I am genuinely afraid if I give him the chance I'm going to softie out when I see his sad puppyface and let him save her) and (2) do you think this will end up slowing down my game even more as the players over analyze every word that comes out of my mouth?

DarkMagus

I understand how you feel. I have a hard time killing off PC's (well at least since college, in highschool it wasn't as much an issue, I'd disintegrate people's limbs if they missed sessions... lol). NPC's that the group are attached too I don't find as difficult though, because no one loses their character and all the time and work put into him or her.

1. I'd say don't worry about giving them a chance to save her, because the world moves without them and they should understand that. If they left the town then there is no way they could have possibly done *anything* to stop it.

2. Not sure, I don't personally know your group, but it sounds like it could be a possibility. One way to fix that though is to not just give time limits out of game, but make their delays and hesitation and over-cautiousness result in something bad happening in the future so they get the point.

Good luck Panda!

Dungeon_Master_Loki

I'd have to agree with DarkMagus on this one. Think about a good TV drama, you often see the sudden blindsiding when an off screen tragedy occurs. It's realistic.

Loki, Semi-Reformed Killer DM

Duskreign

I've done it. Many times. Creating "Kobayashi Maru":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru scenarios in a game helps to make the stakes more real. To offset the risk of your players growing turtle shells to hide inside whenever the next tough decision comes their way, try to devise a way to make timing a factor in the NPC's death. If it was me, I would start a real-world countdown clock to the cut-scene where she dies. You said one of the PCs dreamed of the future? Well, perhaps in the early going of the fight, he gets another vision, an abridged version of the girl's death cut-scene, with a clock face nearby showing when the death is to occur. The way these guys work, they would discuss what to do about this new information. I would interrupt this discussion by having all hell break loose around them. Someone spotted them or overheard them, and now they cannot postpone this fight any longer. They have to choose... run away to save the girl, or stay, fight, and listen when that timer goes off to how that girl dies.

Then, when the timer goes off, I would take out one of two cut-scenes. If they decided to abandon the fight to try to save the girl, something equally tragic happens at the scene of the fight that, had they been there, they could have prevented. It enforces the idea that tragedies happen all the time, and all over the world, and nobody can be everywhere at once. Regardless of the outcome, I would have some way to reach out to them and explain how this might have been avoided if they had trusted in their new allies' abilities and not, themselves, allowed gender bias to exclude willing and capable warriors to come to their aid in a time of great need. If the girl died, the PC that dreamt of marrying her gets a visit from her spirit, who explains all that. If they saved the girl, news reaches town of the tragedy that happened as a result of leaving the bad guys to come back and save her. She gets really angry about their insistence on leaving her behind, and blames the tragedy that occurred at the planned site of the battle on the PCs. She slaps the face of the PC that loved her and storms away. Either way, they learn their lesson, and the risks of them becoming even more decision-averse would be mitigated.

Especially the next time I'd start that countdown clock and NOT tell them what it meant.


"Duskreign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/Duskreign

"Wyrmshadow Campaign Setting":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow

"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic

"The System":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/system

PartyPanda

Dang it Duskreign, I knew I should have asked this question earlier because that's an awesome idea. We cliffhangered the last session just as they were going to bust into the Baron's mansion, so timing won't work out for that idea, but I will be stealing that for later!

My thought now is that I'm going to let the NPC die, and just when the PC has "moved on" have her show up again as a Harrowed (a form of undead where the person's soul remains in the body, if you're unfamiliar with the Deadland's universe). He's a Blessed character and considers the walking dead an affront to God, so it should get interesting on whether or not he decides to kill her permanently.

Oh now I'm excited, I had been trying to come up with a "personal storyline" for each of the PCs and I having the hardest time with the Blessed character, now the gears are turning. BWHAHAHAHAHA!

Dungeon_Master_Loki

Whenever the laughing begins with a "BWHA" you know it's on!

arsheesh

Great idea Dusk! I've used a similar _Kobayashi Maru_ scenario in one of my campaigns and it offered the group a real moral dilemma. I would avoid throwing these type of scenarios in all the time but every once in a while such tough decisions can really break players out of their comfort zone and give them a sense that their are real consequences to their choices.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

PartyPanda

So here is the solution I've come up with (incorporating Dusk's suggestion).

I've warned them that I will be starting a timer at some point during the session that will be counting up rather than down, because their *characters* would have no idea that they are on a schedule. As much as I love them, it's too hard not to metagame when you know you have an exact time limit, and I think it'll keep the tension a bit higher since they don't know when time's run out. I've simply told them that once the clock hits a certain point an "event" will happen.

I've also put into a sealed envelope the following timeline, so they know that I'm not just GM screwing them:

Breach the Baron's Mansion- Timer starts
20 minutes- Love Interest is shot back in town
1 hr- Love interest succumbs to wounds and dies
1 hr 30 min- If Blessed character is willing to deal with the devil he has a chance of reviving her (quite literally since he doesn't have a miracle to revive her he'll have to look elsewhere)
1 hr 45 min - "Permanent" death (meaning she comes back as Harrowed, described above)

I *highly* doubt they will successfully defeat or decide to run away the Baron within the 1 hr time limit, but they might make it back in the 1:30 if they don't screw around too much. This seems to be a good way to get what I want out of the story as a GM without completely negating the sense of player agency.

Thoughts?

gaaran

That sounds pretty intense Panda, I like it!

JonathonVolkmer

I am just so glad I decided to read this thread.

arsheesh

I really like your timer/sealed-envelope idea Panda, I might just steal that myself!

Poutine_Paladin

Good ideas here, but I think you should definitely consider the "vision" aspect so they know they have an important decision. Maybe the blessed character "sees" his love interest get shot at the 20 minute mark, thus creating a sense of urgency and spur their decisions, because unless they know their delay is costing lives (especially the lives of those they love) they will not have any urgency, and kind of defeats part of your purpose in doing this in the first place, I think.

Also gotta say I love the "sealed envelopes beside a timer" atmosphere, because once you've incorporated it....any time you whip out a stack of sealed envelopes it should create a sense of tension at the table that might be hard to achieve otherwise. Beautiful.

Dungeon_Master_Loki

I'm going to playtest the sealed envelope technique in the next game or two. I love that idea and it will fit well with our game.

Great work, very creative!

PartyPanda

Thanks! To be honest the sealed envelope is half about letting the group know that there are predetermined outcomes that will take place as certain times unless they interrupt the sequence, and half about keeping *me* honest in terms of how things work out for the heroes.

I'm debating giving the Blessed a *clear* vision that something has happened to his girl, I might do a spirit check to have him "get a bad feeling" or have him hear her voice call his name. I want to keep player agency, at the same time Dark Magus had a very good point when he said "the world moves without them". On the other hand, the Blessed is the party's best defense against the Baron since he can deflect his magic, so it would be interesting to see if he leaves them in a lurch to save the girl...

I already know that they are going to assume that the countdown has to do with the Baron because he is a voodoo priest. They know that one of the weaknesses of Deadlands voodoo is that spells *take time* to cast (usually an hour or more). Evil Panda wants to see their faces if they beat the big bad and the timer doesn't stop running. I try not to listen to Evil Panda...sometimes...

Game is tomorrow night so I have a little more time to ponder...

Duskreign

The real-world countdown should have an in-game allegory. For some reason, the ticking of a clock might be heard in the Blessed dude's mind, with a cryptically divine intonation echoing just beyond the reach of his conscious mind.

It might also be fun to have several sealed envelopes that he can roll to be able to open once every five minutes or so, and in each is a clue of what might transpire (his character gets a slice of the whole vision, rather than all of it at once). You could allow him to pick an envelope, any envelope, and if he rolls a successful spirit check, he can open the envelope and read aloud its contents (written in his first-person perspective... i.e. - "I see something... in my mind... clustered flocks of feeding meadowlarks scatter with the clamor of thunder... and it rains heavy drops onto coarse cobbled streets..." They can see storm clouds on the horizon in the direction of where they left the girls, and there is a belltower somewhere in that vicinity as well.

Just a thought!

Good luck, PartyPanda! (Heeheehee!!!)

Dungeon_Master_Loki

Looking forward to hearing how this resolves!

gaaran

Dusk, can i join whatever game you are running? your ideas are great :)

Black_Vulmea

I'm a little late to the party, *Panda*, but I'm going to throw out two other suggestions for you to consider.

Suggestion the First: Run the actual combat involving the npc. Let the player run the love-interest and try to keep her alive as you and the other players play the bad guys trying to kill her in town. If you succeed, then she's dead; if the player succeeds, then she has an epic tale of her own to share. In this way the player has a very personal stake in what happens to her - he's not simply a bystander to the process.

Suggestion the Second: Randomize it. I like to be surprised as much as the players are by what happens in the game, so I tend to use a lot of random results from behind the screen - random encounters, reaction rolls, let the dice fall where they may, and so on. One of the coolest tools in my referee's kit is the "_Mythic Game Master Emulator_":http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page9/page9.html - it's designed to be used for GM-less play, but it can also be used to throw the referee curveballs as well. The emulator rules provide a weighted means of answering yes or no questions which allow you to figure out what's going on; someone compared it to a referee's magic eight-ball.

I use _MGME_ a lot when preparing for and running "_Le Ballet de l'Acier_":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/le-ballet-de-l-acier - I use it between games to identify consequences which arise from the adventurers' actions, such as how an npc responds to the something the adventurers did, and a I keep a "flash-based version":http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?508758-Flash-Based-GM-Emulator open on the desktop when I'm running the game for quick reference. Frex, one of the adventurers "came upon the aftermath of a duel":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/le-ballet-de-l-acier/adventure-log/gallant-madness - I wanted to determine how the duellists felt about being discovered, so I put a series of questions to _MGME_ and it turns out that agents of one of the duellists are now seeking the adventurer but haven't found him yet.

Mike aka Black Vulmea
"_Le Ballet de l'Acier_":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/le-ballet-de-l-acier - swashbuckling adventures in the era of the Three Musketeers and Captain Alatriste

PartyPanda

Hello all!

Took a little time to update, wanted to focus on getting the Adventure Log up to date while it was all fairly fresh in my mind.

Well Susan (the love interest) ended up dying. It took them close to 2.5 hours for them to finish the battle. I decided to do the subtle route for the hints that something was wrong. One of my players did figure out something was up back in town when all of the time cues that didn't have have a correlation that he was seeing in game, but he kept his mouth shut since only Eli (the Blessed) was supposed to be getting them.

All in all it worked out really well. The players liked the fact that things were starting to take a little bit of a darker turn and kept referring to it as a good "Season 1 Finale," which I really like since I hadn't really been thinking of the story arcs in terms of TV shows, the fact that they are makes me feel like I'm doing something right. :-D They also liked the pressure of not knowing exactly what was happening in the background.

If anyone is interested in checking out the nitty gritty details it's summed up on the "Manifest Destiny":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/manifestdestiny Adventure Log of course. :-)

~ Panda...Partying On and Partying Out