The Killer Within
“Insubstantial and regeneration? And he can heal? How the hell were we supposed to survive that encounter?” Gosh, I thought, were they?
I’ve read Herr Laws’ book. I’ve devoured the DMGs from first, second, third, and fourth editions plus a few third party efforts as well. I read SRM’s “Save My Game” column every month. Heck, I’ve even gone to the master himself and devoured Master of the Game. I know how I’m supposed to run games. I know the right things to say, how to build balanced encounters, how to create interesting challenges that my players and readers will enjoy. But. BUT. Time and time again, I find myself falling into the old pattern by giving into the dreaded “Killer Within.”
Ask anyone who has written about roleplaying games or any competent Game Master who’s run a game or two and the first piece of advice you should get is that the GM’s is not the players’ enemy. The GM, DM, referee, or whatever is there to facilitate play, to construct a framing story that unfolds based on the players’ choices and accomplishments. Yes, yes, I know this and so, I hope, do you.
This expectation wasn’t always in place. Way back when, the DM could spring the instant kill trap without feeling a shred of remorse. A paisley bolt of death could smite a rules lawyer to cinders. The rules, the story, everything was known through the filter of the dreaded DUNGEON MASTER. Each character dangled above the great roaring hellfire on strings held in the DM’s Cheetos-stained fingertips and should his attention falter, should his patience waver, down, down, down fell the offending character into fiery perdition, with only the faintest puff of smoke to mark his or her passing.
Ahem. Thank goodness those times are gone. The game has given DMs a much-needed PR overhaul and they aren’t quite the monsters of legend. Hell, even all the old nastiness such as the DEATH SPELL have shot, buried, and buried in an unmarked grave. Insta-kill death traps are a thing of the past. Mordenkainen’s disjunction is just a mouthful of syllables and Acererak is just misunderstood. OK. That’s not fair. Acererak is still freaking evil and scary and awesome all at the same time.
I still have the old killer DM tendencies and sometimes I wonder, has the game moved on without me? Have I been left in the graveyard of forgotten monsters with the flail snail and carbuncle? The number of games I’ve run that have ended in tragedy are enough to make the first Dungeon Master cackle with glee.
A look at my background reveals few clues about my cruel streak. My very first Dungeon Master was the inestimable Landon. Unlike me, Landon never displayed the penchant for dissecting adventurers in cruel and unspeakable ways. If anything, he was on our side. Imagine that! Under his watchful gaze, we marched through Deities & Demigods bent on slaughter, 30+ level adventurers hauling a maddening inventory of trinkets and baubles pried from the dead hands of any deity, great or small, that had the unfortunate luck to find itself in our way. And if you think King Arthur and Lancelot got a free pass, think again. We sacked Camelot, butchered Arthur, and plucked Excalibur from his corpse. And then promptly lost it when some goofy air deity’s rust armor turned it to fine red dust. But I digress.
It’s clear on reflection Landon was on our side. There were tough moments, combats where the outcome wasn’t certain, but I never once felt that a challenge was so great we wouldn’t survive. I think Landon was invested in our characters’ stories. He wanted to see us win, wanted to see us carve our names in legend. This was just the sort of DM I should have become, yet somehow, somewhere I lost my way.
I have a reputation for being a ruthless DM, I’m ashamed to say. Where Landon cultivated characters to help them reach their potential, my tactic is to push them, to create complications and challenges that test every resource and those found wanting are more often than not trampled underfoot. See, the thing I like most about running games is the escalating tension. My games tend to start easy and build in difficulty and complexity until the climax. And then, after the obligatory down time, we do it all over again.
As you might expect, not everyone enjoys my play style and I’ve lost players over the years, presumably to other responsibilities, but also because I’m sure they’ve been through enough of my harrowing games that they’re not interested in another jaunt through the hell I might put them through. In my defense, I don’t construct death traps, pit monsters levels and levels above the PCs’ own, or arbitrarily slaughter adventurers. Situations just have a way of turning south. I aim for the tough, complicated fight, where the tide shifts back and forth between hero and villain. I love it when, at the end, the players’ knuckles are white, their foreheads glistening, and the 20-siders and character sheets steam in the aftermath. And so long as each fight doesn’t devolve into an epic contest that drains away resources, I think (and hope) most of my players have fun.
So what about the Killer Within? What is it? The easiest way for me to describe it is as the devil on my shoulder, the monster in my cellar, the old school DM that begs to get loose. Most times I can keep this bastard locked up tight. I put padlocks on the door made from all the experiences I had as a kid playing D&D at Landon’s house. Fair play, honesty, and being on the players’ side all keep the monster at bay. Yet he gets free and when he does, the game turns south and I feel pure, concentrated evil take hold. The body count rises and instead of relieved sighs at the ends, there are dark looks and angry mutters and a few quiet conversations about what they want to play next time if they want to play at all.
How common are TPKs (that is Total Party Kills) in my games? Not as common now as they once were. Back in 3rd edition, scaling fights were far more art than science and one was never quite sure when extra monsters would tip the scales toward certain death. Now, the game system is rather skewed toward the players so even when scaling up or down, you have to really screw up to create an unwinnable situation (barring poor tactics, low healing surges, and so on). Most of my TPKs in the present edition arose from dubious monsters such as my custom-build ghost armed with second wind, insubstantial, and regeneration (sorry about that one guys) or borderline creatures such as the pre-errata needlefang drake swarms. It’s easy to chalk up these disasters to bad luck or nasty monster combinations, but that’s just passing the buck, isn’t it?
The more I think about the less comfortable I am with the TPKs notched on my DM screen. Each is a campaign ended, entertainment turned to frustration, friendships tested as favorite characters are carted out to the great PC graveyard that is the trashcan. Every time the party dies, I fail in my job. There. I said it. Let me say it again. I fail at my job.
See Landon had it right. The DM is not the players’ enemy, he or she is their friend, their ally, a person who will look out for their interests in the game. The DM might construct the wicked plots and combat encounters, may place obstacles in the players’ paths and create situations where the heroes are tested, but at the end of the session, the DM is there to help them succeed. When the Killer Within breaks free, it undermines the “contract” between player and Dungeon Master, the unspoken agreement that the DM will arbitrate the game fairly and honestly.
In the party wipes I’ve witnessed, I should have known by the first or second round how the situation would have turned out. I should have seen how nasty those swarms were going to be and then adjusted to compensate. But you know what? I didn’t. I played it out to the bitter end and managed to slaughter them all. I took no pleasure in it. I didn’t exult in the “power” I had over the players. I mean, really, a DM always wins if he wants to bad enough. Drop in Orcus and game over, right? My only excuse is the Killer Within.
But I still haven’t revealed why the killer gets loose, have I? What is it about my coding that lets my id poop on my ego? Can I think of occasions where everything went off the rails by accident? You bet. There was this time with the origami fire traps… wait. I’ll save that for later. But really, there were times when the dice turned against the players or when a few bad choices landed the party in deep water. I think I can be excused for those.
OK then, what about the times when you knew the encounter was too tough, when you could see the writing on the battlemat by round 2? What about those times? What was the common factor? Well, the times when everything went to crap in 2nd edition, it was largely because I was unhappy with how the campaign had developed. A party filled with uber-powerful characters who chewed through everything I threw at them may have earned a room filled with fire-resistant trolls and a lich. OK. How about 3rd edition? There was the time when I gave a villainous sorcerer limited wish and wish. He “discovered” the spell after I realized the players could not be challenged by the rules as written. There was no way to create conflict that they wouldn’t overcome. This, in my opinion, probably resulted from cunning players who exploited the glaring holes in high-level play.
OK. Fine. Conflict between the players and myself seem to have been the cause in the old days. What about now? Well, D&D is an exceptions game and with exceptions there are exploitable combinations. While we don’t have the problems of dominant classes or game-busting spells from previous editions, we can see huge problems at any level by taking the right combination of feats, powers, and magic items. Here are a few examples from my 4th edition games.
Example 1: Dark Pact Warlock with rod of reaping.
Example 2: Dwarf brothers. One had a goofy feat that gave bloodied adjacent allies a +2 bonus to defenses and saving throws. Ugh.
Example 3: Two 1st level pre-errata battleragers wiped out a level 5 elite without breaking a sweat.
The three examples all occurred with the same gaming group on the same bimonthly game. My other Wednesday game hasn’t had a TPK yet (post-4e that is). And my Sunday game had only a few close calls, including one with several nasty grell. So maybe the Killer Within is now exclusive to this particular group? Or if not the group, maybe it emerges in reaction to a particular circumstance?
The group in question is now happily jaunting through Age of Worms. The party feels balanced. There’s an invoker, sorcerer, a bard, monk, wizard, with a miss-happy paladin rounding them out. They’re tough but not ridiculous. They can handle most encounters without trouble. Yet there was a moment last game session when I felt the Killer pound at the door. One player wanted to bring in a new character to replace the dwarven druid he just didn’t like. He created four characters: a monk, an illusionist wizard, a shielding cleric, and a marauder ranger. At first, I didn’t object to any of them as they all seemed swell. However, I started thinking about the cleric, especially after hearing about the shenanigans some players have pulled with the build. Knowing the player, I understood that he would trick out the character with all the bells and whistles and should the character come into play, I’d be staring at a nigh invulnerable party.
In the end, he went with the illusionist wizard. I wasn’t subtle about my concerns for his cleric and I, admittedly, pressured him to go this route. On reflection, maybe I should have let him have his fun. But had I, I’m certain the killer within would have broken loose and put an end to an otherwise great campaign. Why is it that I can’t swallow certain PC concepts? Who am I to crap on someone else’s fun? I mean, I’d do the same if I was playing wouldn’t I? Hell, my shaman hits almost as hard about as hard as a striker. So if it’s good for me, why can’t it be good for my players?
I could put on my snooty game designer hat and say I have some sort of moral objection to what I see as abuses in the rules. And when the drow rogue in my Sunday hops on his fly figurine of wondrous power, flies 10 squares as a free action, draws a potion as a minor action, drinks said potion as a move action, pops walking wounded, and then flies 10 squares out of line of sight as another free action, should I not reward the player for being clever? Should I not invoke Landon’s spirit and celebrate the player’s ingenuity?
My head says yes. My gut says no. And here’s why. Dungeon Masters play the game to have fun too. It’s not fun to wipe the party since it ends the story. However, it’s also not fun when the PCs trample all the clever design, when a player finds a loophole in the game and exploits it to death. And it’s never fun when you have to keep escalating the difficulty to address the one or two characters who otherwise can’t be threatened.
The core of my problem I suspect is fun. If I’m not having a good time, my interest in preserving the game withers. Looking back on all the TPKs, most end up happening because I’m simply not enjoying myself. And usually, the reason I’m not enjoying myself is because certain characters suck all the fun out of the game. See, just as there are expectations for the DM, there are also expectations for the player. For me, the most important rule is: Don’t be a Dick. Each player has the responsibility to work as a team member, to not hog the spotlight, and to use the rules as they were intended. (This includes not cheating; really, roll your damned dice where everyone can see them. I do. So should you.). Playing a disruptive character who lives to cause trouble (such as when a psychotic reading of True Neutral results in blasting your allies with call lightning to even the odds between the adventurers and monsters) or, worse, can’t be bothered to pay attention (because the new app on your Droid phone is super-interesting) to what’s going on violates the unspoken contract as much as does a DM who’s preferred tactic is to throw monsters 5 or more levels above the PCs combat after combat after. Similarly, the player who scours Character Builder searching for loopholes and busted feat-power-magic item combinations creates a situation where the DM’s job becomes far harder and much less fun. Harder, because he can’t do his or her job: challenge the players. Less fun, because the outcome is certain every time.
You figured out how to turn a longsword into a high crit brutal 5 weapon. Does this mean you should do it? Should you bring this to the table? Is this something you want to see in the game? Furthermore, is this something you want directed at you, each and every combat from every monster you face until the campaign burns to the ground? Do you want every monster you face to heal his buddies to full four times per encounter in every encounter? You want monsters to zip onto the battlefield, deliver 50 damage, and zip away before you can do anything about it? Do you want monsters with an inexhaustible number of temporary hit points? Or how about every monster you fight can attack you twice, mark you, and then slap an extra -2 penalty on your attack rolls from 2 squares away every time? Do you see what I’m saying? Once in a while, these things are okay, but every game session? When you plop a character on the table with annoying tech, the DM has to square off against that character every single combat in every single game session. And if you combine this busted character with several busted characters, well, you can see how a DM will crack.
The most annoying responses I get is “But your name was on the cover/top of the article.” Or, “if they didn’t want us to do it, why did they print it?” I don’t have answers for these questions. Maybe there was a hiccup in development. Maybe there are several thousand feats and powers and magic items in the game and no one in their right mind can remember them all. Maybe someone somewhere thought people would identify the spirit of the rule and not try to squeeze every bit of broken from it that they can. And before I get a finger-wag at 4e, I’d like to remind you how much fun it was when your carefully constructed campaign villain/favorite character goes down like a two dollar hooker at Marti Gras after rolling 1 on saving throw against finger of death.
Look, I fully believe every player playing a team-oriented RPG should create a character that is effective. Buddy, it’s your job to play a character that fits the story. If you’re playing a game of bored housecats exploring their ennui, then play a housecat with ennui. You don’t play a goblin in Dogs in the Vineyard and you sure as hell wouldn’t play a Superman in A Song of Ice and Fire. So, in a game called Dungeons & Dragons, it’s your job as a player to create a character that fits the story. I don’t care what edition you’re playing: If you play a fighter with a 14 Strength and a 9 Constitution, you’re not going to be able to contribute toward the party’s success on the battlefield in any meaningful way. So please, don’t take this as a call to play gimped characters. What I’m saying to all players is simply to curb your enthusiasm. You wouldn’t like it if someone in your group stopped you from having fun, so why would you do your damnedest to stop your DM from having fun?
(By DM fun, I’m talking about the DM having the chance to create interesting environments, the chance for his or her monsters to do the cool thing once or twice. To create situations designed to challenge the numbers on your character sheets for more than it takes to reach your first turn. By DM fun, I’m talking about not using the Intimidate skill to get Orcus to back down. That’s all I’m saying.)
So my advice is this. The next time you’re sitting down to create a character and your trawling Character Builder for ideas, you’re going to find something super cool. And when you start looking, you might just find a few cool things that look awesome together. Put them together, you might just come up with the ultimate character. Great. “Roll” it up. Delight in your creativity. Cackle with glee at the horror that will show on your DM’s face. Take it out for a spin. Show it off to your Mom. But when you’re done, when you’ve had your fun, stick the character in a folder and forget about it. Then go back make something reasonable.
In the end, I don’t think I’m alone. Every DM has a Killer Within, a cruel, ravening monster who tears free when he or she is bored, frustrated, or simply not paying attention. As a DM, keep the Killer locked up and buried deep, only letting it out for the encounter that marks the adventure’s climax if you even let it out at all. As players, recognize that the DM plays the game to have fun too and how you approach game play goes a long way toward making sure you never have to face the Killer Within and can see your adventure reach the epic destiny you crave.
Of course, for convention games, all bets are off.
You said it! It’s a DM’s duty to slaughter the convention goers.
I have yet to kill a PC. Like many DMs, I love the characters my players produce and want to see them succeed and, hell, maybe even prosper. And even when they decide to switch into a new character, they often ask that I not kill the character.
However, I do have a couple of players who maximize their characters, sometimes to a level that starts to suck the fun out of the game for me. This led me to increase the difficulty for a while until one of my players accused me of being antagonistic. We discussed it for a bit and came to a reasonable understanding. It’s true, the encounters became more challenging, the PCs get bloodied more often and might even spend a round or two on their backs. But once they realized that I wasn’t going in for the kill, I think they relaxed a bit and let themselves enjoy the challenge.
But even I have the desire to be a cruel DM every so often. We recently ran a Dark Sun mini-adventure on an off-week and that was a perfect opportunity for me to try out a more evil DM hat. It was refreshing and my players enjoyed the slightly different style of play for a session or two.
A timely article. I just TPK’d my 4e group. It was my first TPK in at least a decade.
However, I didn’t feel bad in this instance, as the sorcerer killed the warlord in friendly fire and then the group battled on despite losing the healer.
Good article – food for thought.
I’m kind of on the other end of that. I haven’t thrown out a TPK in a very long tiime. I rarely even kill a character. Some may disagree, but I prefer letting the party continue in abject failure with the knowledge things just got harder on them. They did something stupid, why kill them? I have always loved the old adage “If he dies, he won’t learn anything.” Watching the party try to recover from a devastating blow to their plans is far more satisfying. Yeah, mouth off to the leader of the militia stuck in the middle of a siege in front of all his direct subordinates? If you think death will save you, think again! That’s much too easy. I HAVE PLANS FOR YOU….
Excellent piece, reflective of my thoughts on DMing as well. In the end, however, I’m not sure I agree with your view of the route cause — dick players. I’m not saying that’s not a problem; I just feel it’s a social issue, not a DMing game balance issue. My Killer Within arises from philosophical and game play reasons.
First off, philosophical: Adventurers have a great life. They gather and throw around oodles of cash. They constantly find fantastic toys to play with. They are famous — the source of heroic tales and legendary songs day in and day out. They strut around like conquerors. They can pretty much say “up yours” to anyone they meet for there is monumental strength in numbers. Very few groups of powerful individuals — other than other adventuring groups (which are exceedingly difficult for DMs to run on a regular basis) — are found together in one place.
Except for one huge downside, everyone in the world would want to be an adventurer. Except for that downside, we’d have more adventurers per square mile than any world could support. We’d be looking at the demographics of an MMO, where unlimited supplies of constantly respawning monsters are feed to the ever hungry XP maws of PCs. The big downside — the only thing that can control the heroic population and desirability of being an adventurer — is death. Most people in a medieval fantasy would wouldn’t dream of becoming an adventurer because the life expectancy sucks. In my view, the default assumption should be that, whatever number of promising young adventurers arise, most are slaughtered fairly quickly in grisly and unheroic ways. The campaign’s PCs are the exception, of course, but an exception is only meaningful if it is truly rare. As fellow heroes are the primary, often the only, comparative demographic, PC deaths serve an important purpose of reinforcing the bedrock reality that keeps the campaign setting coherent.
I’m not saying PC deaths should be common or insignificant. Nor am I saying that they should be planned in detail. On the other hand, the heroes should feel like nearly every fight is a serious one; that death dogs their footsteps; and that inattention to tactics can be fatal, if not personally, to an ally.
This view, while harsh, is completely antagonistic to TPKs. As you say, that’s just a fun-killer and likely a game-killer. There’s nothing heroic, sacrificial, or storybuilding about a TPK.
The philosophical view is complemented by a game play rationale: Your article resonated most keenly when you noted “I aim for the tough, complicated fight, where the tide shifts back and forth between hero and villain. I love it when, at the end, the players’ knuckles are white, their foreheads glistening, and the 20-siders and character sheets steam in the aftermath.” That’s fun. That’s exciting. That’s what gets talked about a year down the road, or even at the next week’s session. Also, as you say, it’s entertaining for the DM. The principle cause of DM fun, as you mention, should the satisfaction of a clever challenge that plays out well and energizes your players. The secret to that, however, is not so much preparation as improvisation. Clearly, you have to prepare — an unprepared DM is inexcusable in my view (cancel the game and reschedule, or let someone else take the reigns, for pete’s sake) — but preparation can’t do the heavy lifting. Adjustment on the fly, not just of NPC reactions, plot points, and event locations, but of combat tactics, motivations, and stats is key. As you said, you know within a couple rounds if your prep is off. The mark of a good DM is how well you modify the play session. If it’s too far gone on the easy side, wrap up the combat and move on. Gives the players a bit of breathing room. If it’s overboard on the killing side, you need to smoothly, consistently, and convincingly ratchet it back, but not too far. That balance, that real-time recalibration, is what makes a session fun for me. Now, it’s rare that such fast footwork comes to light. In fact, in my view, it’s far better to keep the players as ignorant as possible of the rejiggering necessary — keeps their sense of accomplishment high.
So the ideal for me is a hard push in every combat. A sense that life and death is in the balance. That the heroes are constantly walking the knife’s edge. I aim to eliminate any combat that falls short of that. I ask, should it be dispensed with completely? If important in some way, can it be converted to a skill challenge? Can it be told in narrative with a roll to see if or how many surges are lost? That saves me at least an hour of game play to devote to more important storytelling activities. With the advent of 4e, my thinking has evolved to aim for at least one death saving throw each combat. If and when the players clue into that, the game gains a new level of asset allocation: encounter, daily, surges, and death saves. Once several encounters have passed, the players need to start thinking about who’s going to step into the most direct line of fire. If it’s the rogue or ranger who dishing major damage but has taken a beating and currently sits on few surges and one or two failed saving throws, death is a very real possibility. Still, if that’s the choice the player or the party makes, that death is going to be one to be remembered because the character purposely stepped in harm’s way knowing the serious risk. That’s heroic, the stuff of legends.
My two cents . . . thanks for an interesting read.
In my defense…
…YOU suggested I take the Ebony Fly.
I have done a fair bit orf DM’ing myself in day gone by, and currently involve myself in the prepatory stages of resuming that mantle on a regular basis. I have even DM’d most of the people referenced in this article, inlcuding the author.
My thoughts to your thoughts…
The DM has to be the smartest person in the room to avoid many of the situations that cause them frustration. When you have a group of very smart individuals among your players, and they put their minds to it, yes they are going to upstage your cleverly laid plans and diabolical machinations. Not every time, to be sure. and maybe not often. But it happens Hell, sometimes players saunter right past the obvious, the ONE thing that you placed blatantly in their path with nary a glance at it, missing an opportunity you spent hours working not just mechanics around, but intircate story details as well. (yes, I am The Actor)
I have always been happiest as a DM when my players are having fun. MY fun is THEIR fun. What makes players happy? For some, it is beign able to announce rediculously large numbers for their to hits and damage. For some, it is formulating strategies and battlefield movments that satisfy a chess player’s drive. For some, it is the chance to wax thespian (ahem, cough) during intense emotional dialouge with other players. Let players have their fun. When they ae having fun, they tend to be more manageable, complimentary of your efforts, and focused on what is going on. When they are not having fun, it can turn to escalation. Frustrated palyer strive to make their voices heard, adopt combative playstyles, or just not pay attention.
So how do we meet in the middle? How does the DM’s fun become one with the player’s?
Talk to them. No, really. Talk to them. As a group, because that’s really when it comes together. When DM and players realize they are not two different factions vying for dominance or even balance. That we are all just one big group, and each of us has a different job in it, but that we are all in it together. Let your players know what you expect. Ask your players what they want. Find the common ground. This is done through talking to each other. Take five minutes every few sessions to sit down and talk about how things are progressing, what has been liked or not liked about the past few sesions. The relationship between DM and Player is just that–a relationship. And like all relationships it takes communication and compromise to make it work.
Tomorrow night I start a new group I am DM’ing. Some are old hands. Some are new to 4E, but not to D&D. One has never played an RPG before. I specifically chose a mix like this to inject fresh perspectives into the player base. Our first night I have instructed no one to show up with a character already made, and preferably not even an idea they are dead set on playing.
First night is for talking. For the group to just talk about concepts, characaters, story backgrounds, playstyles, They are going to tell me what they want by the end of the night, and I am going to tell them what I would like to try. Somewhere in the middle, hopefully we will all find some things that we can smile and say we’d like to try.
The person who walked in the door thinking they’d like to really be the defender this time, may leave itching to try out a controller due to the great idea one of the others had and then ideas start riffing off of each other. Hopefully. Hell, everyone may just want to hang out, roll dice, drink beer, and tell jokes while we play a pencil and paper video game.
But in the end I am hoping that we all sit down and decide as a group what we want to do to have fun. Then DO it.
Player fun and DM fun don’t have to be two seperate things. Shoot for GROUP fun.
That;s my story and I’m sticking to it.
~Rook
Great article, Rob, and not just because it mentions me repeatedly.
I like Rook’s suggestion, and I think it touches on something Magister Laws left out of his Little Brown Book. In it, he does discuss what bring the various players to the table, and advises would-be gamemasters on how to push those “fun buttons” to ensure that everyone has a good time. What he doesn’t discuss is the fact that different gamemasters have different “fun buttons,” too.
Some GMs, as you allude in your article, live vicariously, to some extent, through the NPCs and monsters; he likes “the chance for his or her monsters to do the cool thing once or twice,” as you mentioned. It’s neither better or worse than any other motivation, but it is it’s own thing. It’s different from the DM whose “fun button” is to see a particular story arc develop in a classic way, or from the DM whose real raison d’etre is to see how fast the PCs can solve his clever puzzles. Everyone games for a different reason, but, similarly, everyone runs for a different reason, as well.
I like to see the story develop, play out, in an exciting but rewarding way. I’ve run a lot of superhero games because I found myself more comfortable with game systems that expected the players to live, rather than making it a matter of chance and numbers – suited my particular needs as a GM better, I guess. But, either way, when I run games, I’m on the side of the players, as you astutely put it, primarily because if they don’t make it, they don’t get to see how the story ends… and neither do I!
It’s not better or worse than other reasons for running, but – as Rook (hey, man, good to “see” you) puts it – it’s important for everyone to be one the same page, to be part of a single project. If some player’s sense of fun comes from cleverly interacting with the rules in such a way as to build the most mechanically disgusting yet technically legal character he can construct, that’s going to be a problem for some GMs, based on what THEY need from the game, and it’s vital to get out in front of that sort of thing. Other GMs might not care – after all, reading through some of the great fantasy novels, does anything think that Conan or Aragorn were “balanced” characters? For some GMs, it might not matter as much if the PCs are “broken”; nine-tenths of the time, they ride roughshod over the enemy, like a Tolkien elf killing orcs, and the rest of the time, the GM can haul out any horrific spawn of his imagination he wants to really challenge them, because the bottom line is that no matter HOW ‘sploit-heavy the PCs are, they CANNOT outgun the GM. The GM can cook up anything he needs to crush… or merely challenge… ANY group of characters.
A good read – another good read, I should say. You’re a resource to the industry and a credit to the hobby, and I can still recall the adventures we had as we wrote together the legend of Ator, back in the day. Good times, man. Good times.
I think I can understand why the Killer Within manifests itself under certain circumstances. Long, long ago, in a trailer park far, far away, I Dungeon Mastered first and second edition D&D games. For the most part, I learned not to be slavishly devoted to the narratives I had created for adventures and story lines. At times, I let the stories grow almost organically. I also found that a basic narrative superstructure worked, and that I needed to allow for player injected chaos. So, I became adept at improvisation.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the game the most when I could be creative and the players were intrigued by the story lines and were having fun. When the Killer Within burst from out my chest, spraying the players with partially digested beer and beef jerky, was when the people I played with evolved into or brought in gamer “friends” who were Power Gamers, Chaotic Stupid, Game Lawyers, Loot Whores or blatantly Dice Roll Cheaters.
Power Gamers; don’t even get me started on those min-max guys. When they brought in characters with 18’s in nearly all attributes into my games, I had to bump up my monsters. When they brought in broken gear and equipment, they drove me crackers. They also were masters at exploiting the system and forcing me to react as a DM, the bag of chickens mentioned by Rob in his earlier blog is a good example of that type of gaming. After a while, I simply gave them a chance at fantastic acts or tricks, but just made the chance for success nearly nil, and made monsters with advanced attributes to counter them. I also drove by their houses late at night and took dumps in their mailboxes, power dumps, that is.
Chaotic Stupid, that speaks for itself and DMs have been dealing with that for years and years in their games. In Rob’s list of Incredible Acts of Gaming Stupidity, the origami boxes with fire trap cast on them still sticks in my memory, as well as the ochre jelly sandwich with the flame garnish. Mostly in my case as a DM, I just had nimrods that went off alone, picked fights with the wrong people or just sat in an inn and refused to follow the story narrative. Here’s to the worst moments in gaming, the boring burden of malaise in players and the DM.
Game Lawyers brought adventures to a halt with excruciating arguments over loopholes and rules interpretation. I hate you all for succubus sucking the life out of my games while fist raping my mind with rote rules and obscure rulings.
Loot Whores suck, and they don’t swallow. I had one notorious Loot Whore run past a rogue, who had both his hands abruptly amputated in a nasty chest trap, shove him aside and then start rummaging through the items in the chest. I reacted to the blatant avaricious nature of such detestable characters by putting really cumbersome items, like huge clocks, cursed bejeweled codpieces or enormous rolled up rugs, anything to make it hard to liquidate items and get cash.
Dice Roll Cheaters screwed up my game math, that bell curve of probability, and forced me to dump even better protected and more resilient monsters in the old systems, or just plain cheat back. I felt like breaking their fingers and forcing them to spit the dice out of their mouths on to the table for all to see.
In addition to those particular gaming archetypes, massive wealth brought in by unscreened characters, as well as copious amounts of spell mats (a fifty pound bag of diamond dust… remember that one Rob?) and out of the ordinary, powerful items, resulted in characters being draped with sparkling magic items that assisted in blasting through my monster encounters. I began to cut out money almost entirely and allowed my monsters to have some hideous magic items usable by only evil alignments and a lot of potions and scrolls. Or, just simply drive by their house, take a power dump in their mailboxes and sprinkle gold glitter on the fecal snake hanging precariously out the box opening.
I am pretty sure I began to sour on Dungeon Mastering when I spent a year creating the ponderously epic and unpublishable Labyrinth of the Minotaur King. Being a DM simply became a belabored chore, the gamers were border line arrogant and hateful, delighting in pissing me. They often complained I was unfair or never gave them enough treasure. The Killer Within came out, and I made a point of killing people every chance I got, or my favorite thing to do, just torture them with cursed items and conditions. If they did something stupid, I reacted accordingly. I only had one TPK that I can remember, and I did feel a little bad about it. Once I committed myself to that huge battle, I got stubborn and refused to back down, so much for flexibility.
I came to hate being a DM. My ideas were not appreciated, the players were on a permanent menses cramp, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of additional materials, items and class feats that made it harder and harder to create dungeons. I gave up.
There have also been times over the years when the game was also not fun for me as a player. Those times were just bumps in the road though, and the main group I have stuck with all this time is one I would rather game with than any other. Granted, we have our difficulties, and the DM often gets a pulsing blood vessel, but overall, his DM style has worked as a sort of boot camp, forcing us to play within the rules to the best of our ability and to pay attention to the story line.
The only thing I miss from earlier games is my ability to fall into a role, to be a character with all of the traits and foibles. I think with 4.0 it’s harder for me to find a character, create a back story and character act. Nothing against character builder, from a DM point of view, I could see why that is a massive exploit problem, but everything feels canned or prepackaged now, like the old Hero Quest games. They were fun, but they were simple and the characters were set.
Sometimes, I do miss the old days of character acting with my drunken, degenerate, and sheep raping Scottish ranger, Angus, or my rob from rich and give to the poor thief, Rat Finger, but those heady days are gone, as is that old style of dungeon design and DMing.
I guess I am just a gaming dinosaur, waiting for that push into the tar pits. Maybe someday, I will be dug up by future generations who will say. “This is what a Gaming Nerd used to look like. Now that we have advanced to MMO’s that are jacked into our brains, scientists wonder how they did it. How they played on scraps of “paper,” with writing instruments called “pencils” used little pieces of plastic called “dice” and did something human brains once had the capacity to do, before evolving, they used their “imagination.” This particular Nerd fossil is also grabbing his genitalia with one hand and appears to have an ancient alcoholic drink in the other.”
@ Landon——>Good to “see” you again too. It’s been toooo long. A health to your company my friend.
@ Joe——->Stay away from my mailbox. Remember, I know where you live as well, and I have polaroid photos of your own mailbox. On Kodachrome. In a plain brown envlope in a safe in Tom’s office with instructions on what to do with them in he event of my mailbox’s demise. Toy with a drow’s mail at your own peril. I have an Ebony Fly. I can have it drop poop bombs at will upon your lowly hovel.
I am wise to you sir.
Excellent article! I haven’t wiped out any parties yet, but I’m new – give me time.
I understand what you mean about the Killer DM having the potential to emerge when you’re frustrated with your players and the way they’re playing the game. I think DMs in general are not fans of power gamers who min-max to the hilt.
Having thought this issue through, I’ve concluded that the problem isn’t exactly power gamers per se – you can always ramp up the difficulty to make it a challenge for them. The problem is when you have characters of vastly different power levels in the same party.
If everyone in the party is super-powerful for their level, then the DM’s job isn’t too hard – you use higher-level encounters, give monsters extra abilities that will make them more challenging, and so on. The problem is when one or two players are super-powerful but the others are of a normal power level. In that situation, ramping up the difficulty to challenge the power gamers will make the monsters just plain deadly to the rest of the party.
The same problem can occur in reverse if you have a party of mostly average-power characters and one or two characters who have terrible stats (your example of the 14 Strength / 9 Constitution fighter comes to mind). Those under-powered characters are not going to be able to fight interesting battles alongside their more powerful brethren and will be reduced to either standing in the back or getting themselves slaughtered.
In my opinion, the key to a fun gaming environment is to have a party of similarly-powered characters. They don’t have to be all the same power level, but they should be close. In that situation, the DM can create encounters that challenge everyone but that everyone can contribute to. That’s what we want as dungeon masters.
[...] @ 8:00 AM This post was inspired by my response to Robert J. Schwalb’s blog post about the Killer DM within. A quick aside: I found Robert’s blog via a link on Sarah Darkmagic – a fellow RPG [...]