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Drache64
2019-08-04, 11:27 PM
In many campaigns I have a player do something so brazen and stupid that he typically writes himself out of the campaign (attacking guards when they are level 1-3, jumping down a large pit to the underdark when the rest of the party has no intention of following them, trying to assassinate a political figure and failing miserably).

There are so many times that a player does something ill advised, and I even warn them that there could be major consequences to their actions. In such cases they are not dead, but they are effectively written out of the campaign by their actions.

I have found situations like these tempting to treat the character as dead. "Sorry but your character is imprisoned for 20 years and I nobody want's to rescue you, I will give you a few quick rolls to escape from prison and join the party in a few encounters, fail those and you are out of this campaign" or "Your character is lost in the underdark for the rest of this mission. Do you want to roll a new character as if he died?"

What do you guys do in these situations.

Note: I am not asking for advice, just simply shared experiences. I find if I don't specify this little fact people tend to try and "fix" what I do not consider broken. Just looking for what other's do.

MarkVIIIMarc
2019-08-05, 08:52 AM
Sometimes I'll give the player a few hints semi OOC like:

Shallows would notice there are a dozen guards on the street

Or

If I haven't mentioned it the under dark is an entirely scary place Jericho would have heard plenty of tales about in bars or around the camp fires.

KineticDiplomat
2019-08-05, 12:33 PM
I tend to play systems where the characters start as highly competent individuals, but risks are real, so this may not be that analogous to D&D.

None the less, I usually ask why they are doing it, then let it fall in one of two ways:

1) Let the dice fall where they may. Sometimes they’ll surprise you. Sometimes they die.

2) If it’s an overwhelming situation and they end up captured/missing, I let their team mates decide. I tell them they do not have to, but have the option to, go conduct a rescuer mission. As they collect information (or as they show up if not) I make it clear this rescue will be risky business. Characters may die. Everyone might die. But they could also be heroes. Is it worth taking the risk to bail out their friend, or, in hindsight was he being an idiot and should be left to rot? Their call.

If they go on the mission, it won’t be a walkover. But it won’t be an impossibility eitherz

RNightstalker
2019-08-05, 06:34 PM
Some people just have to find out the hard way. Others don't like their characters due to whatever so they act accordingly to remedy the situation.

Vknight
2019-08-05, 07:23 PM
Man its been so long since something like this happened in the big obvious way.

But yeah just do the smart things and write them out of the campaign

Too note my most recent example is a supers game where the mutant sewer-shark woman kept not helping the party and leaving without interacting with them in a meaningful capacity to such a point that none of them could contact her for a big mission.
Not only was this a problem it wrote her out of the next 2-or-3 sessions because they would not investigate or take any initiative.
So the players unwillingness to be a hero got them out of the campaign.


But stupid actions leading to full player death?

I had a player try and shoot a archmages familiar. Despite knowing it was a familiar and more

CombatBunny
2019-08-07, 10:44 AM
Whenever a player is incurring in a potentially deadly course of action, I warn them and ask them if they still want to go on, but I do that regardless if they are following the world's logic or they are just being reckless. The warning is just so that they are aware of the risk, but never in the sense of “you are ruining my story and I’m getting mad”.

As for players getting lost, imprisoned or walking away from the rest of the players, I just treat them like a new story branch and run them as parallel stories. I have no problem with this as my group likes to split a lot and I have grown accustomed to run the game like different actors on the same story rather than a group of characters that travels together all the time.

Still when this happens I warn them, if a story branch or branches start to develop strongly or get out of scope from each other, I will focus on the strongest one (the one that has most interest from the table as a whole) or the one with more players involved and the others will be considered like not relevant and those players will have to create new characters. I also assign characters and NPCs to the rest of the players to every branch, so that no one gets to not participate in any scene.