Nobody in the party is allowed to have a backstory with dead parents.
Too easy, meet me in my gauntlet. D&D Nightmare mode: Nobody in the party is allowed to have a sad backstory.
your party all has to schedule time to visit their live parents roughly once a month even if that conflicts with their normal quest flow. bringing souvenirs for your younger siblings is encouraged
Use your generated character as a powerful NPC in your D&D game; an avatar of the DM that aids or hinders the PCs. They’re not immortal tho, and could be trounced by the players or other antagonistic NPCs.
Also I’m the ‘Angel of Radical Revolution’ apparently.
Like, if you’re running a one-shot death dungeon expressly created to test the durability and limits of your party, then yeah that’s fine, but in my experience, anything other than a casual one-shot tends to end the same way- with a tpk in the first encounter, upset players, and a smug DM feeling superior because they had the edge. No one has fun, no one enjoys it- and shit, even when you DO run the one-shot, your players can end up hating that too, and resenting you for putting them through it. There’s a boundary, between fair and unfair, and running a game requires balance so that neither party feels cheated. I’ll be honest, my first real ‘death dungeon’ had a trap that killed a PC. It was a crushing trap, with a gradually-increasing strength save DC the longer it took for the other players to stop the trap. It was purposely designed to kill a PC. That is why I made it. But the death of that PC upset another player so badly that they refused to continue on. I don’t blame them, of course- i made a dungeon that delt every entrant a bad hand, and I expressly told the players of my one shot that their characters would die- there was a 0.00001% chance of beating my dungeon. They felt that I cheated the other player, because the DC changed suddenly from round to round, and I could only shrug and say ‘sorry, this is what i said would happen.’. Because of that, I adjusted the dungeon- i have yet to find a chance to re-run it- but I put work into rebalancing what a player thought was unfun, unfair.
Anyways, point of it all is, don’t run low-level characters through high-level shit without. telling them. Because no one wants to feel cheated.
Hell, don’t run low level characters in general. 3′s a good starting level. No one wants to die because a hobgoblin with a pickaxe rolled a nat 20 and killed their fighter/wizard/rogue/barbarian in a single strike.
I agree, for the most part. I think, if your not running a session for brand new players who’ve never played D&D, starting at 3 is ideal- every character has access to the real defining thing in their class (an archtype) at level 3, regardless of class, and it just makes more sense that those who know the game start around there- no need to put on training wheels if your players already grasp the mechancis.
For brand new players, i think 1st level is ideal to help them get a grasp of the game’s core mechanics, before introducing specialized mechanics involved with their class.
Last week, my party was so unfocused that I was getting legitimately angry. So as punishment, this week I’ve planned an extra special encounter.
They are going to fight Actual Cannibal Shia LaBoeuf.
I’m going to see how long it takes them to figure it out.
Will post updates.
Our Rogue and Paladin started picking up on it after they heard the phrases “brandishing a knife” and “death in his eyes.” They laughed out loud when Shia took a bite out of our Fighter’s leg. That’s when they knew.
They learned their lesson. Piss me off, I’ll keep you there until 2:30 AM while you hopelessly struggle to fight off Shia LaBeouf.
Procrastination Station 