(TFT) First Adventure

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

At 6:27 -0400 7/20/10, Joey wrote:
> 1) Anyone remember a little known TFT computer game (not official, i
> believe) from 1985? It was called Tomb of Terror,

How cool is that? No, I don't remember, but Yeah, it would be awesome 
to play on my mac with the kids!

At 6:27 -0400 7/20/10, TFT Digest wrote:
> 2) How do you guys feel about trying to save the player's characters
> as  I did above?

Uh oh. Not sure I have time to adequately express my completely 
conflicted emotions about that one! A few observations:

1) In a campaign, characters dying often means it's hard to advance 
to high levels, so you shut out part of the game.

2) In a one-shot, most players take only a single character. It's a 
total drag having to send someone home early.

2a) Dead PC players can take over some GM roles, like playing 
opponents. This has worked well in the past.

2b) I'm trying to design in NPC's to go with the party who are 
"interesting" enough that the players who lost their PC's will enjoy 
taking them over. This seems challenging.

3) If players never die, there's some "edge" lost to the combats. 
Moreover, the players never develop any "wisdom"; that is, they never 
have the sense to turn tail and run, even when it would be the right 
reaction. "The GM is taking care of us, there must be a way to win 
this."

4) "It depends" is an OK reaction for a referee to have. Adjusting 
the threat to the party's strength is cinematically a good move - 
heck, all the best movies do it! Realism is great, but this is 
entertainment, and if the referee can rationalize a different or less 
effective threat, I'd say go for it! (But see (3) above.)

I'm hoping this question kicks off a long and fruitful discussion 
from which I can learn a lot! DMG's earlier posts (and youtube 
videos) on the subject have been enigmatic but very interesting in 
the past; "Like a deer in the headlights .... 'his head explodes'." 
Wow.
--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:

				Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"