One of the more difficult things that you will have to deal with at some point is the death of a character. Challenging characters is important. If there is no threat of failure, even if it is a perceived threat, it is hard for the players to feel compelled by the encounter or the story.
The ultimate challenge a player will face is avoiding death. Very often, it is also the ultimate failure. The worlds of Legends of Kralis are a dangerous place. Death is always right around the corner. Death is serious business because it means that player can no longer play his character. Because it is serious business, we have built in safeguards for the players. First, true death does not happen until the character has been reduced to their Stamina Score in negative health, which can be done by bleeding out over time or by someone continuing to hack at them when they are down. Character's also have a way of "Self-resurrecting" through the use of heroic luck. Instead of outright killing the character, they fall unconscious until the party can rest and help them awaken. Additionally, you could apply a lasting consequence after awakening. These could be things such as taking on a vicious, permanent looking scar. Perhaps the wound(s) never heal quite right, reducing the total Health Points of the character by 10+d10 points. Perhaps the character is shaken to the core and takes on insanity as listed on page 48. Finally, when there is no other resort to rely on, the character's adventure ends. When this occurs, allow that character, if the story and narrative allow, to choose to survive the death causing wound, but it is their last adventure as the rigors of missions, exploring and adventuring is too much and they retire. This allows the character to become a part of the world. As a secondary end, you could allow the character and player to make their final moments a heroic sacrifice that saves the rest of party. When a character does parish ultimately, the most straightforward response is to allow the character to create a new character. While ideally having them create a 1st rank character is the easiest, it will be more satisfying for the player to create a character at the same rank as the rest of the party. When a player has a new character ready to join, arrange the story and circumstances so that you can bring in the new character most quickly and logically possible. There is a very fine alternative to the death of a character: Mostly Dead: As an alternative instead of the character dying they are critically injured. This allows the PC to teeter on the brink of death but survive. This alternative has the character in a deep coma for some time (typically 24 hours) and is beyond even magical help to revive. The character awakens but is scarred from the near-death experience. This always carry some penalty: • Reduction in Movement • A permanent loss to a Skill, Attribute or even Defense • Social stagnation; Because the character has survived the death others can sense something is wrong with the character. Total Party Kills Total Party Kills, TPKs or Wipes, are often the result of bad rolling, bad player decisions and powerful enemies. TPKs, fortunately, are rare, but they are a constant threat that lurks in the shadows of every combat, and every so often they occur and they threaten your campaign and story as well. Total party kills first and foremost should never happen on a random encounter; when they do occur they should happen on an epic heroic level where the PCs go down fighting to the finish. As the GM, you have the good and bad fortune of seeing it coming because from behind the screen you have got a more complete picture; you are seeing the rolls of the players, you have the stats of the monsters and bad guys. When a TPK does occur the players will feel the impact deeply, they have lost the characters that they have spent that last few ranks building their character into what they want, and suddenly all of this changes. The player's reactions could range from: no worries, let's roll up new characters to demoralization and anger at the lost character. In all these cases, players will turn to you as the GM for what they need to do. As the GM you have the power to "fix" the party without losing any of the sting that a TPK delivers so that the party and the players might be more cautious in the future. Avoiding the TPK No matter what the cause is there are a few ways that you can avoid a TPK. As the GM the ultimate responsibility for the campaign and scenario design is in your corner. While encounters do not have to be balanced necessarily, death still needs to be a real consequence for individual players, you should attempt to make them fair. While you are putting the encounters together, always consider the power of the bad guys vs. your players. The players should always have a reasonable chance to defeat their opponents. Secondly, you have a couple of turns perhaps to the last die roll and the last character falling and you have the ability to enact any of the Dues Ex Machina Rules should you decide not to let things play out. The players also have a bit of responsibility in avoiding a TPK. Unfortunately, they may not know this until its too late, unless you talked about it in session zero; however, you can relay this information to them afterward, hoping that they can use the information to avoid another TPK. Players need to understand that character death is always possible when the dice are thrown during combat. Often, the players do not have a lot say about when a TPK will occur, they do not have any foreknowledge about the encounter, but it does fall to them to try and be prepared. Players should learn when to fight or flee. The encounter may have become tougher than they thought, even with foreshadowing of the danger, and they need to run. No one likes to flee from an encounter, but as the idiom says "discretion is the better part of valor" and slipping out of the encounter before things go from not working well to TPK, is a safe and solid choice. While having the players duck and run may put a damper on the next few sessions of the campaign as you get things put back together, it is better than losing the whole party. Additionally, if they survive or generate new characters, you can instruct the players that they should attempt to be prepared for any encounter that may come their way. Often this means that they make an appropriate selection of abilities and items, perhaps even purchasing magical items. When a TPK does occur, as GM you must make sure that legitimize the death of the party, by making sure it is fair Once the last character drops, and the last die is rolled, you have to go to work. Obviously, you will want consequences with in the game world to matter at the table. However, you also want to make sure that everyone is still having fun and will want them to not stop playing, either in the campaign or in the game. There are a couple of ways to keep everyone happy after the fact, without diluting the meaning of the party's death and the TPK. Campaign Inclusion - The pain of a TPK can be reduced somewhat by allowing the TPK to affect the setting. This allows the players to enjoy seeing their character deaths reflected in the campaign world. This can range from legends arising from their demise. To priests becoming something of a local saint, fighters drifting into myth as their names become the basis for companies or mercenary groups. Memorials of the party begin to appear in the towns or villages that the party used as a base of operations. Next Up - One of the quickest and stereotypical solutions to have everyone generate new characters and then send them back into the foray to either pick up where the previous party left off, either by command/request of a contact or to set off on a mission to discover what happened to the missing party. This helps keep cohesion in the campaign and gives the players the ability to defeat whatever killed the last party and possibly pick up where the first group left off. Powerful Intervention - This route tends to make the sting of a TPK less powerful and less meaningful. However, if new characters will not work with the player's story, this option might work well. There are a couple of twists that you can put into place that will keep the players actively engaged and perhaps create a greater story. Have a powerful entity, preferably a non-deity, such as a powerful demonic lord, a powerful patron, or even a mysterious presence bring the characters back from the brink of death. The resurrecting entity could be on the side of good and understand the need for the characters; on the other hand the intervening entity or power has a more sinister agenda, might demand a tremendous price to be paid or may place the characters into a slavery bond with the entity. Not as bad - If there is a need to keep the players alive because of really bad dice roles or a landslide of really bad decisions, then instead of using lethal damage directly, perhaps that last damage dealt to the players was against their fatigue instead, and instead of being dead the players wake up hours later, captured, stripped of gear and forced to deal with the new situation. Truly the End - Sometimes, when the characters have failed at the climax of a moment, perhaps the story moves on to allow evil or chaos to succeed in its plan. Allow this to affect the campaign world, and let the players see these effects when they generate new characters for a new story line.
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Once you have the players together and they have been given a reason to be in a party, you need to be able to set the initial scene of your adventure or your campaign. This will help set the tone for the rest of the story and will hopefully get the player characters interested in what is happening and pushing them to want to continue.
This can be combined with the integration of players or used instead of integrating players. Sometimes the opening scenes of an adventure can be difficult to start off. The following are a sample of starting seeds for the adventure: In medias res (Latin: into the middle things): What better way to bring together a disparate group of individuals than to throw them into the middle of the mix. "The oku horde is at the edge of town and people are either fleeing, cowering or looking to you for help!" "The shaldhun barrels into the village swinging its huge maul and smashing everything in sight. People scatter as the monster heads for the center of town." "Suddenly the old spellcaster's shop explodes into flames which quickly spread to other buildings. A call for help echoes in the streets." "Through out town koh-boru as their fir darrig leaders begin to crawl out of the sewers attacking and dragging people back into the dank underground waterways!" There is nothing more immediate and dangerous than a rampaging monster, invaders or even a disaster to suddenly bring together a party. A state of chaos is a very easy way to bring characters together. They do not know each other's capabilities or lack thereof but they will very quickly. Escape or else: One of the more often used (other than "You are in a tavern..") is the shared experience of being captured. A great way to bond a new group together is to put them in a shared trauma for their characters. Being captured and escaping allows players to figure out quickly what everyone can do. You may also start the group as part of a slave group where a number of NPC slaves have been killed in front of the players by the slavers to show who is boss and set a stage of fear where they never know when they may be next. "You wake up with serious knots on your head and your body badly bruised. You are clothed only in tattered and shredded loincloths and are locked in an iron cage!" "You open your only good eye, the other is swollen with bruising. Your hands are chained above you into the walls. As you look around you notice several other species in the same situation." "You wake to the whips and cruel shouts of your ogre captors." "With the crack of a whip you awake to your bleeding hands, your feet chained to the bottom of a boat and surrounded by dozens of other enslaved oarsmen." Mistaken Identity: You have heard it before, "You are a spitting image of.." you shake your head and smile and reply: "I have heard that..." but what would happen if you suddenly found yourself mistaken for the local thief that has been breaking into homes. Or the red cloaked assassin that killed Baron Guthridge. Or that's them the ones that raided the temple the other night. Or that one or more of the players suddenly find themselves the target of an assassins or thieves guild. And suddenly you find yourself defending yourself or fleeing the guards, assassins or the bounty hunters that have come looking for the real perpetrators. A part of the Watch: Very few other ways allow you to bring together a party than to be under the service of the local watch or guardsmen of the village or town. Often you can arrange for the players to be on the same watch time. As part of the same group or two separate groups that are suddenly called upon to investigate a murder, break up a tavern brawl or begin the hunt for a group of thieves that have been breaking into local homes recently. Locked up! Like the escape or else seed, locked up brings the character's from different backgrounds to be thrown into the local dungeon or jail together, each accused of various crimes ranging from brawling to theft to murder to mistaken identity. While in the jail an old NPC tells them about the lost city of or the last treasure of or.... The Wreck: While this is mainly attuned for beginnings with no real story arc in place yet, it can be fun for bonding characters and players together with a in media res sort of way. The players were all passengers on a ship either crossing an ocean, an inner sea or traveling down a river when suddenly they are set upon by a storm that causes the ship to wreck. Each of the players wakes up one by one only to find themselves with short term amnesia from being tossed around and while they have memory of their skills, but they are limited. They may even find themselves castaways on a remote island or surrounded by a wartorn area overrun by hordes of monstrous species. The Leader: There are times when bringing players together can be done through one of the players themselves. With this seed one of the players is told that they are cursed or that they are the recipient (either accidentally or by giving to) of a cursed item that they must destroy or be killed by more powerful beings to get the item. The Caravan: In a similar string of seeds to that of Escape or Else or the Watch, the players are all a part of a caravan arriving into a town or are making their way to a town when they are attacked, they stop to help out another group of travelers that have survived an attack (which might occur again soon) or that they stop as a contingent of riders, knights or guards can be seen blocking the road while soot-covered bodies can be seen on either side of the road while many other guards are running towards a cave with shields and swords drawn. Or perhaps when the caravan stops at a caravansary for the night the players suddenly find themselves in an "escape or else" seed where the entire caravan has been captured and all the travelers are crammed together into iron cages. The Undead: Along the lines of in medias res the players suddenly find themselves and the village they are living in invaded by zombies, skeletons or other undead from the local grave sites. They must escape alive in order to stop the undead threat. Cosmic Threat: While this is more of a plot hook and bears a resemblance of in medias res, the use of a cosmic threat or horror is a great away for players to bond, to stand against the great threat that the region or village is about to experience. In this seed the players have all come to the village from different backgrounds and suddenly find themselves in the middle of a crisis. This can range from: 1) At night a fog appears from out of nowhere to ensnare the region. Purple glowing runes appear on every building within the area and horrid creatures appear out of the darkest corners during this time to attack or drag off victims. 2) Once per month on the same day a horrific-shaped Void ship arrives to the town to demand tribute. Beings in metal clockwork body armor invade the town as this tribute is gathered up into the ship. 3) A portal opens high above the town or region and the body of a huge figure can be seen falling towards the ground, as it gets closer to the surface it shrinks to the size of a normal humanoid. Amongst the more important duties, you will have as a GM is assisting players to create their characters. Chapter 1 of the Legends of Kralis Players Guide provides a 9 step guide for character creation and, when followed, should pave an easy path for a new player to generate a new character. It will also help veterans should they forget a step. Essentially, character creation comes down to the following: Pick a Species (and Subspecies if one is available); Determine Attributes; Pick a Focus; Choose some skills and then Pick a starting ability.
When you begin this, get your players together and walk them through the process, step by step, answering questions that might arise. In order to make this a process smoother, take a moment at the beginning and ask each player what type of character they may want to play: A combat type, a social type, a knowledge type or a stealth type. While the types are generic, this gives you and them an idea of what kind of character they want to play. As you are doing this, you might ask them to eliminate any potential duplicate-like characters and shore up possible weaknesses in the party. While it is often a good thing to have a well rounded party that can handle a wide range of situations and give each player a specialty, there are times where a group may want to take on a specific motif of types. Perhaps they are all part of the Ta' Jahu Secret Security or they are a band of roaming Bhahuul priests, or perhaps they desire to establish themselves as good hearted chovah air-pirates. When the players have finished their characters take a moment to look over them to better understand the player characters and how they will be involved in the adventure and campaign. The important part of this process is to be sure and take down some notes about each character. These notes should be a part of your campaign journal or log. They can range from the character's name, focus type, aspects, motivations, background, any exceptionally high attributes, personal information, or important details such as species information or if they have armor and what type. You may also use the Kralis Character Cards as a way to track characters (download sheets at www.talariusgaming.com) Of particular importance is to take notes about the skills that a character has invested in a lot. Specifically, any skills that are in their focus or any additional skills that they have chosen. This can give you a good idea about what sort of things that player will what her character to excel in or her style of play or what type of adventure you can tailor to suit the skill set. This is also a good time for troubleshooting. Recognizing what skills might be lacking or if a player did not get a correct beginning skill total. If the adventure will call for a lot of Void-flying and the player(s) have vested their skills in Languages or Lore, you might let her know that the player character may not feel very useful during much of the adventure. You may also give players an idea of what type of adventure or campaign they are going to be playing in and help them determine what skills, beyond their focus, that they should take. If a player wants to keep all her skills, but you feel that they should have a specific skill, then grant them the use of the skill. How you choose to deal with this depends on your players and your own personality and style. Integrating the Characters Once you know who the characters are and what their focuses are, you should look at the current story and the adventure (or even the campaign) and decide how to involve the characters. It is important to explain why the characters are together or care enough to begin the adventure at hand. Do not hesitate to throw the characters together for odd or bizarre reasons. Even in the same cliche of "You all meet in the Red Dragon Tavern..." some of the best campaigns have begun with this trope. While cliches can be used to bring a group together, if the players do not feel much compulsion to be in the initial scene, it may be more difficult keep their interest through out the rest of the adventure, let alone a whole campaign. Be careful of what cliche starting tropes that you use, some players may reject it, while others are not bothered by it at all. The following are a number of ways to bring the characters together: The Ties that Bind - This grouping has two concepts: the first is that the player characters have all known each other for many years. These relationships can be anywhere from childhood friends to rowdy bar friends to shopkeepers working with each other in the town, city, or village. They also may be a part of the same guild performing different functions within the guild. Perhaps they are a part of a thespian entertainment group that travels from one location to another. Defenders - Similar to Ties that Bind, Defenders places the characters as part of a local watch, sheriffs, city guards or part of an organization (knights, watchers, crusaders, adventurers guild, etc.). As such they know of each other, though the relationships are weak and loosely affiliated. Yet, they are requested to defend the village, the city, look into the goings on in the sewer complex of the city, stop monsters from raiding the local farmers. They may even be hired as guards of a caravan needing defenders against the wilds of the world. Bounty Hunters - As individuals looking for work, they each locate a bounty for a wanted criminal, a lost item or even to discover the fate of a merchants caravan that has gone missing. In this grouping the character's are all hired by the same individual to perform some task. Fate Intervenes - In this grouping all the characters become involved together when suddenly something terrible occurs. They are forced to work together to solve the problem, defend the village, or track down the murderer of the local constable. Or perhaps they have all been accused of some incident and are rounded up, individually or all at the same time by the local town watch or guards. Perhaps they are in the same caravansary when it suddenly is besieged by monsters or the local thugs. Or perhaps they are all on the same airship, sailing ship, or passengers on a Void Transport Ship, when pirates or raiders suddenly attack them. Or perhaps they are all magically teleported against their wills to a room deep within a prison or dungeon and must work to escape. In the Service of - The PCs all serve a local lord, and similar to Defenders, they may be on the same squad of defenders in the service of the city and have been requested that they escort their nobleman, archmage, etc., to another city, or retrieve an object from a merchant in another city. Perhaps the area they live in is being attacked by a horrible monster or by groups of monsters, and they are ordered to stop them. Religious Order - The characters are all of the same religious order, or most of them are, serving as crusaders, priests, monks, or viziers. The church and the holy order are often called upon to perform quests, tasks, and missions that the religious order deems important. If the entire party is not of the same faith or are not of the faithful, they could then be hired as bounty hunters or mercenaries to serve in the quest. Mercenaries - Like bounty hunters, characters in this group have been gathered together by a powerful patron to accomplish a task, a mission or quest. They will all be paid handsomely if they all should survive and return having accomplished the quest or mission. We Come Together - The characters have all been brought together at the funeral of a mutual friend or connecting relative. They are drawn into discussions because of lingering questions about how the person died, perhaps a couple of the characters are being investigated for their odd connection to the person. Or perhaps during the burial the procession is attacked by a powerful person or creature that escapes with the body and they must retrieve it and investigate what is going on. They are all Targets - This finds that each of the character's have themselves targeted by a group of assassins or killers. Perhaps this occurs at the same inn they are staying in or perhaps right in the middle of the day as the characters are shopping in the local market. Who are We - This assumes a great deal of trust from the players on the GM and willing to move the story along. The party awakes with no exact memory of who they are, they remember their names and they know they have skills (perhaps they get to pick the skills they might have during character creation), but nothing much else. Perhaps they awake on stone slabs, naked as a dark sacrifice ritual is taking place and they are the sacrifice to the Old Gods. Perhaps they awake on the shores of some land all around them are bodies and ruins of some ship. The characters and perhaps a few others are all that have survived and suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of an attack from the locals (monsters or tribesmen). Escape - The characters need to escape they may be prisoners within the city, or the prisoners of a brutal lord and has thrown them into their dungeon to rot. Or they are being tortured for various reasons, most likely because they are wrongly believed to have specific information required by those who have captured them. Or they were sacked by slavers and have been or are being brought to the slave lords keep and are to be sold in short order. Or they all begin in some monster’s lair and must escape before they become food. This may be a dragon, a roc, a giant or some other huge or giant beast that has captured them all. OutCasts -The characters all have been born with a specific mark that the more hostile believers see that they are the sign of doom to city, town or region and have been forced out into the world to fend for themselves either as young adults or bound adults and taken away from the city to be executed or dropped of some cliffs or other high point. In Medias Res - In the same vein as fate intervenes, In Medias Res throws the character's together due to some "apocalyptic" event that causes them to band together for survival, defense or saving the region from the impending doom. This is done by having the characters caught up in the middle of things happening at a pace that they cannot control directly and must make through in the beginning to confront the problem later in a more controlled fashion for the characters. You Too - This grouping relies on the backstories of the players and linking them together as a plot device where they all have separate connections towards a specific goal or target, but are unknown at the start to each other. This may be revenge by one character, recovery of the object for their lord, been hired to destroy or kill the target, one character is out to stop the object or target from destroying another object or target. This can be very tricky and requires you as the GM to "soft-railroad" the players so that at the right moment, the various characters must then determine how to handle the situation when they all find out they are invested in the same goal for different reasons. All of Us -This method allows the players to present a personal and unique opening scene. Ask the players to explain why their characters are together and what motives they have for being a group. Once you have established the opening premise or scene, the players then come up with the reasons why they are at that initial scene. Ask them to think about subplots and past relationships they may have with any NPCs. This method requires a strong group of players that can improvise on the spot, but it is also more rewarding for the players as they have established their motives for being in the adventure and set the future of the campaign. Evil Characters Evil player characters are often refused to be allowed by nearly all GMs, in almost all RPGs, and for very good reasons. Traditionally, campaigns are centered around good characters struggling against the dark, and throwing an evil character into the mix could shatter party cohesiveness and possible in-fighting. Occasionally, a player has an idea to play an anti-hero, or perhaps you have a story-line that requires evil characters to play. Perhaps the players are playing good characters and evil characters in the same game and if you are clever enough both groups on different days could be working against each other until the day you reveal that the players have been playing both groups and now comes the twist of them facing each other in a final, terrible conclusion. Evil characters are more than just vile beings that engage in offensive behavior or homicidal maniacs. Just as good characters do, evil characters do not just do what ever they want, for they also understand that there are repercussions for their actions. The key to allow players to play evil characters is a find a way to align their interests to the story line. Perhaps they are the antithesis of a group of heroes working to stop their dark lord from conquering the region. If a single player wants to play an evil character, you and the player must align the characters interest with those of the good or neutral characters in the party. This is best done through a compelling backstory for the evil character. Perhaps a much more vile or dark being, entity or energy wronged, betrayed or hurt the character in such a way that it has spurred the character to seek revenge and this aligns with some like-minded folks. Still, their plans and the evil character's plans might not be the same, the end goal does. This is what you want with the character and the group: similar goals; moreover, the evil character wants and needs to use the part to achieve their goals. Most players seem only to think that being evil means acting in a genocidal or maniacal way and that they must kill everything in their path. While this sums up the majority or regular players, this type of thinking or gaming is not something that the evil character or party wants to be directly associated with. That type of action tends to draw unwelcome attention, and this will significantly reduce the player's or the group's longevity when people around them find out that they are evil. In the campaign world, most people tend to be neutral in their outlooks; they work the land, rule the kingdoms and tend to be in every nook and cranny. Many will work towards being good and altruistic as much for themselves as for the world itself. Then there are those few within a society that are evil; they are hopelessly out numbered and there is no shortage of good-aligned groups to hunt them down and stop their works and deeds. One of the biggest obstacles for players attempting to play an evil character is understanding when they need to show their dark side, and when to play it close. Their reputation is what they need to protect and make the rest of the population believe that they are good individuals. They need to work in secret, formulate their plans, execute those plans and repeat this every day. This tends to be the difference between good players and those that decide to attempt to play an evil character. Evil characters need to grow to survive, evolve. They will have the most character growth than everyone else in the party. The big question is then, why would a character supposed to be evil bother to be a part of a group of others that are not inherently evil. The following are couple of reasons why they might be together: - They owe a member of the party a life debt - They are attempting to reform one or two of the group - The target wronged them that the party is opposing - The party is looking for the same object you are to bring about their patrons desires. - Their patron or master as ordered them to assassinate the party. - They are actively attempting to reform themselves - They are aware that the party is central to the completion of some ancient prophecy |
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