You need a bit of both. I don’t want a cakewalk for my storytelling, but I want some break from the pain train every now and again.
Like, i’d love a good story, but I wanna work for it and risk things to get the reward at the end. I don’t want the game to be a formality, I wanna roll dice and worry about whether or not I’m gonna die sometimes
I want my characters to die. I didn’t realize until recently how alone I am in this, but the idea of playing a campaign almost more like a roguelite (or maybe a Pokémon nuzlock?) is so appealing to me. I want the consequences to be so real that a decent player might need 2 or 3 backup characters, where a happy ending isn’t garunteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in total tragedy. then the victories and successes would feel so much more earned, and campaigns would feel much less like on-rails experiences. plus failures can encourage creativity. a story where everyone just wins each task after the other is boring
[I want a game] where a happy ending isn’t guaranteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in a total tragedy.
100% this. While I don’t think meat grinder campaigns are the only way to achieve this, I’m enamored by running a game like this. I’m currently thinking about my next game, and I’m torn between a VtM game set in Ukraine during the Russian revolution, or a PF2e game set in a civil war of my own creation, and I think that would be one of the best situations to run a game like this. I want there to be loss, and I think the brutality of civil war is perfect for it.
I don’t know what VtM or PF2e mean, but I definitly agree with the rest of your sentiment. Id love to play a campaign in a brutal cival war setting like that
Vampire the Masquerade and Pathfinder 2nd Edition. They are different systems.
Thematically this is just a tone to set for running an RPG, but system wise…
If sticking to Sword and Sorcery…
I want the consequences to be so real that a decent player might need 2 or 3 backup characters, where a happy ending isn’t garunteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in total tragedy.
…You might like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Uses funky dice (optional), and you start with a few “level zero” characters that go through a deadly dungeon known as a “funnel.” The survivors end up as your level 1 character(s).
Maybe thematically it’s not about pull-no-punches storytelling or anything, but the system itself is brutal and rewards player cunning, wit, and luck, to overcome challenges. (And no, the DM isn’t required to be an adversarial psycho lol.)
Never played it myself but it falls into that category of “OSR” kinda games that try to revitalize the spirit of classic “Player smarts vs. Consequences” gameplay over theatrical plot-beats.
Apart from fantasy, my favorite system is Savage Worlds. It can run any genre, the game by default is “cinematic” and favors the players as heroes, but many mechanics make the numbers “swingy” so nothing is ever “not dangerous.” With the right rolls, a squire can behead the Orc war chief, or a lowly thug’s .38 caliber could put your spec-ops commando in critical condition!
It’s also heavily customizable. You want pulp adventures where heroes shrug off bullet wounds with sheer grit? Easy!
You want what you described up there where every victory is won tooth and nail? Try adding an optional rule where every wound causes a potentially permanent injury in a setting like “War of the Dead” or “Weird Wars Rome / I / II / Vietnam” and things are gonna get real tense, real quick.
Players have lots of tools at their disposal, but dice also “explode” both ways. Sometimes an inconsequential attack can one-shot you into bleeding out, but I guarantee the whole table erupts when a player goes for broke and the dice just keep poppin’! Love that system.
It’s very quick and easy for GMs to run too, I’d say. Great balance between narrative flexibility and tactical “crunch.” :)
You should look into Mork Borg. Very grim and easy for everything to die, oh and the world is ending.
My first and only dm was a huge dick
The start of the campaign village is being attacked, I picked a swordsman cus swing sword is easy probably good for a beginner
Anyways I roll a 20, DM hypes it up saying I have impeccable footwork, draw the blade from its sheath perfect, doing this epic buildup for about a minute or 2. Then he flatly says I miss my perfect swing because every enemy was 200 feet away
That was in middle school and now my GF is trying so hard to get me into Baldurs Gate and now it’s just a matter of me doing some DnD homework about classes and other stuff so I’m not going in 100% blind
Dont do any digging in bg3 mechanics or gameplay or story points until you hit a point you need to.
At least in my opinion, its nothing like that shitty DM. If bg3 was how DND games went more would play for sure.
Oh yeah I’m sure BG is nothing like that DM lol
Yeah there isnt even a difficulty that allows you to make mistakes like that. Although you can target the wrong thing by misclicking, it happens once every 20 hours of in game play lol
Oh that’s nice
Its still frustrating.
You don’t need to do that with baldurs gate. Just dive in.
Yeah the real secret about 5.0 is that all classes are broken and OP, and the nice thing about BG3 is that they do the math for you.
Oh well that’s nice
I feel like this comic embodies the personalities of Aabria Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan
I absolutely read the lower half in Brennan’s voice.
To be fair they break Brendan frequently
I think they have a little bit of both, which is important! One of the best Brennan quotes was “people think I’m nice, but I just conform to the genre”
ŸES! I immediately heard Aabria!
DM 1: “We’re going to have a magical just-so adventure and everything will be on rails! I’ve got a bunch of art I’m going to show you and I expect everyone to do voices and play in whatever vague medieval fantasy pastiche passes for In Character. I want everyone to have a good time, but also cry when my NPC gives a twenty minute monologue. This game is my entire personality.”
DM 2: “Here’s a stack of character sheets. I found a dungeon in a magazine called The Infinite Rectal Immolator that looks cool as hell. You have a 25 point buy and three magic weapons of less than 15k gp each. Just ordered a stack of pizzas and a five gallon jug of Mountain Dew. Let’s see who makes it through. If we get bored, I’ve also got the new Halo game on XBox.”
Not gonna lie I’d love to play the second DM’s game as a one shot.
Try Trophy Dark.
Or Perfect Dark! I…really like Perfect Dark.
And then there are the cyberpunk DMs that do both.
“Dang, my character has some sweet augs, I’m a one man army, time to take on the corpos!”
corpos bring a real army and then hit you with an orbital particle weapon
corpos bring a real army and then hit you with an orbital particle weapon
(Credits Roll)
🎵
[Verse 1] I couldn’t wait for you to come and clear the cupboards But now you’re gone and leaving nothing but a sign Another evening, I’ll be sitting reading in-between your lines Because I miss you all the time
[Chorus] So, what do you wanna do? What’s your point of view? There’s a party, screw it, do you wanna go? A handshake with you, what’s your point of view? I’m on top of you, I don’t wanna go 'Cause I really wanna stay at your housе And I hopе this works out🎵
If ya know, ya know. 😭 Lol
Eclipse phase does even better
You wake up in a resleeve pod, you start to slowly get the feel of your new body, you’re a thin girl with butterfly wing? Looks cool you never got used to the smell of that Gorilla hybrid morph you used before. Looking at your arm you see a large tattoo Wang body rental and start to think about how the triad will make you pay while wondering what you do here. You’re muse tells you that they restored a backup from last month, as you&ve been missing for over 2 weeks.
In EP, a TPK isn’t the end, but the start
I’m not trying to kill my party, but I also won’t stop them from being stupid and getting themselves killed. I design my campaigns like an open world video game. Everything is going on and just reacts to the players. They can find bits of information about things and then act on it, doing whatever they want until they start finding clues about the big bad because I like to try and make it more natural with the characters just existing in the world and not the stereotypical call for adventure a lot of modules and stuff do. But this also means balancing out the world by having the encounter zones being somewhat static. Over here shit is low level, but over there stuff is high level. But like, they will have clues. If they hear the rumors of a Balrog at level 3 and want to go fight it, that’s on them.
DungeonCast School vs Gygax School.
One comes from the influence of tabletop streams that focus on narrative building because it’s got a broader audience appeal and they’re usually close friends with the players at the table and want to hype up their characters.
The other comes from the generational trauma Gary Gygax inflicted on nerdom by insisting that the DM wins by killing all the PCs.
I’m dming my first campaign soon wish me luck hope I’m number one
I wonder if DMs start as the first and slowly transition into the second one.
They get broken with time
It’s not the GM trying to break my spirit, it’s my frickin’ dice. Those little death polygons want to humiliate me by proxy. This is why I bought a creme brulee torch, you little fuckers.
Roll for intimidation
sigh Making CHA my dump stat is gonna fuck me, isn’t it? I roll…
…a natural 20. 😳
A good DM is both of these. They want you to feel that the danger is real, because higher stakes means the narrative payoff feels earned. They want you to feel like the world is wonderous, so that it feels like a thing worth fighting for.
The second one is definitely me. I’ve had so many players cry during games that I’ve lost track.
To be clear, always the good “This moment really emotionally resonated with me” kind of tears. I do very narrative heavy games, and I like to really crank the drama to 11.
Not gonna lie I kinda respect people who can do that. I, the forever-GM, am also always “the funny one” and didn’t really grow up with positive associations with expressing “deep, moving, dramatic, or sorrowful” emotions.
If I made people sniffly at my table I’m afraid I’d get concerned and everyone would feel awkward. Or maybe I’d feel the most awkward and feel forced to make something goofy happen like a Marvel movie writer lol.
If I got wrapped up in it and made myself emotional? Ahh! It’s like that “I showed up to school/work with no pants” nightmare!
But that’s like, human, right? Being moved by stories. I worry I won’t be able to tell impactful tales with depth beyond “beer, pretzels, and Monty Python jokes” unless I can get get past that personal block. =\
TL;DR: Anyway, not afraid to go dramatic and your players keep coming back. That’s really fascinating and I genuinely mean that. Power to you!
ITT: discussion about BDSM using codewords and allegories in every comment.
ಠ_ಠ
From the campaigns I’ve DMed, I’ve gone for a bit of an in-between. My primary focus is to have a fun, shared narrative. I’ll always let players do stupid things that get them into grave danger. But at most, I’ll usually only ever kill a few of the PCs.
If they act carefully, they can avoid getting into that situation all together. If they act stupid, they may have some deaths on their hands, but never a TPK. I don’t want that kind of narrative dead end.
The other thing, is that I will never put the players in such a situation in which there isn’t a way out of it. Usually this comes down to abusing the rule of cool a bit. Maybe they use a well aimed shatter to collapse a cave and separate themselves from their enemies. Maybe they jump down the cliff into the river below. Maybe the enemies have taken such a beating themselves that they find they aren’t willing to fight to the death.
I am (was to be more correct) more in between
You can be the first type, and some players will still see you as the second.
Like, they attack the king’s castle for no reason and are upset the guards don’t lie down and die, then refuse to surrender when things are entirely hopeless and they’re offered mercy. Such a mean DM!
I’m a big fan of the "wisdom " check before players do something that seems, to me, completely stupid. Like, hey, before you set out to storm the castle, roll your highest knowledge skill.
Tactics, architecture, history, etc, all good. But any success on any skill (or even, literally, Wisdom if nothing else) gets you a little hint that this is a terrible idea.
“OK well, as a Baker, you understand that the huge wagon pulling 500 loaves of bread into the castle means there must be an enormous amount of guards. Since you got a natural 20 on your Cooking check, you can estimate the number precisely to around 150. Even if they weild the baguettes as weapons, you are certain they will defeat you.”
And then, most parties I’ve played with will then begin formulating their plan to sneak in on the bread wagon, which is a much funnier story. Or they’ll complain that they meant the druid should cause a storm to distract the guards or something like that. It’s kind of amazing how often these bad plans arise from a miscommunication.
Oh, I don’t let the fickle dice tell me when to give a hint or twenty. Nat 1’s come aplenty when you gate-keep crucial information on a die roll.
Only thing that worked was jettisoning the players who torpedoed campaigns for whatever reason.
