A Player's Thoughts On Dm Events And Interaction

[*Synyster Spirit]

DM Events are not Railroad Plots. You're not on some path that you must absolutely follow.

The choices your character makes are what give them depth.

So I challenge you, the players of SCoD.

Did you ever think that death is a bit more serious than popping a Coin of Life or Raise / Ress Scroll or Spell? Personally, I do not take death seriously when I'm out grinding or something. But when it comes to RP between players and DMs, I find it to be a very serious subject.

Did the thought ever occur to you that your character could and may very well die as a result of the choices they make? What makes you believe that death is so simple? I think it should be taken a lot more seriously.

Players should be, and likely would be equally rewarded for high tailing it and running instead of trying to take on the Big Bad. RP and DM events especially are not linear. Choice. It's all about choice. It's those choices that make RP fun and where you discover what the DM has in store for you. Just because you decide not to step through that portal doesn't necessarily mean you're passing up on a DM event. It could just be a choice that's leading you down a different path for the event. If the DM is already giving you the attention, don't you think you're going to see something out of it based on your choices? Wouldn't you hope that even though you're making a difficult choice things aren't going to just fade to black with "So you guys don't enter the portal? Alright thanks for playing. Here's your event reward. Take care." Perhaps that might happen, or perhaps you'll find yourselves in a different situation moments later.

Here's another thing. Hostile Actions. You don't always get to drop down, rest, and start freecast buffing yourself. To some people, that can easily be considered a hostile action and will likely be treated as such. This shouldn't be a surprise to you. Think about what you do and what you say before you do it :P and be able to handle whatever may come from your choices.

Have some situational awareness. If you're a mage and you step into an anti-magic zone.. Aren't you going to be scared or worried? Is there reason enough for you to proceed into that anti-magic zone where you are completely powerless? If you feel tremors through the ground like something massive is approaching is your character going to stick around to find out or would they prefer to keep their life and run? Wait.. Death is no big deal, right? Wrong. Death should be a big deal to you. And once you see that massive, hulking beast charging at your party.. Do you really think you'll just be able to kill it? What if it's not something you will combat with the game mechanics and everything will be done through RP? If the DM gives you multiple opportunities to make choices and you persist to follow what I would perceive to be the railroad, then you shouldn't be surprised if your party gets wiped out by some monster that you probably should have ran away from when given the chance. I'm just insisting that you be prepared, that you expect, bad things to happen and you be willing to accept what comes out of the choices you make. I'm not saying that characters should be permakilled, but I do believe that people take death a lot more seriously and be a little more fearful of things. There is definitely a lot to be scared of out in the multiverse.

Here is a huge pet peeve of mine that is honestly one of the only things that ever gets on my nerves. Dice rolls. We're here to ROLEplay, not ROLLplay. Player situations are circumstantial and can be handled between players.. But during a DM event.. I do not find it necessary for people to roll dice for anything unless a DM asks for it to be done. You can assume that, depending on the circumstances, whatever the DM emotes to you is information freely given for you to use and does not require a dice roll. This goes for emotes done by players as well, in my opinion. So.. Point is.. Dice rolling unnecessary unless a DM asks for you to do so specifically.

Feel free to add your own thoughts and opinions. I encourage you to.

[*Swiftbow]

Well, we were chatting about this in Tells, and to a point, I agree with you.

But it's all about playing characters, and I generally don't play any that shy away from adventure. Why? Because I'm here to have an adventure. I've lost plenty of characters in PnP, and we never had raises available, so death is plenty on my mind.

But I'd still rather die and have an amusing tale to tell of the giant cloud of death bugs that ate my character because I was too dumb to leave than just head back to town and have another chat next to the bar.

But that's me and my characters. I fully agree folks should endeavor to play the personalities they've worked out. And potential death shouldn't just be a transient thing.

[*Synyster Spirit]

This was a general post unspecific to any events that I've personally experienced, but more so overall observations of compiled experiences.

[*Zilvai]

Words of wisdom here Syn. I think death should absolutely not be taken lightly. You wont find yourself screwing up majorly and coming back to life that easily to fix it all.

[*Reptiller]

20000 Thumbs up for Dice Roll Hate from Reptiller. Us on death, unless its a preplanned "self-assasination" thing it should not be taken THAT lightly.

[*LockeMurdock]

I've seen some people rapidly change their PC attitudes when a DM is talking to them. It's kind of entertaining.

Take two gruff, hardened warriors who stand around glaring all day and being badasses. Now have a male PC come up to them and ask if they'd like to help bake a cake or sing.

They'll scoff and ignore him.

Now have a DM approach with the SAME request. Suddenly our dark anit-heroes cannot get enough of that bakin'! And boy, if they get to sing a song about flour, EVEN BETTER!

"I while away the hours,
consulting with the flours,
conferring with the grains..."

This gets even worse when there's a PC nearby who actually IS a baker, but who is left out of things for being new or unfamiliar.



It's pretty silly. But when you stop and realize nearly 90% of the population is just standing in place outside of the bar, it's bound to happen. They're one character for all that time so they're willing to completely reverse that personality JUST because they can finally do something. -_-

It's a bummer, but there's no real solution other than leading by example. Be the guy who goes, "Wait, what? Baking? No, I don't have any interest in it. Sorry, DM Baker Character!" Pull people away from the bar... to locations other than Elysium's beach, please. :wub:

[*Synyster Spirit]

I've seen some people rapidly change their PC attitudes when a DM is talking to them. It's kind of entertaining.

Take two gruff, hardened warriors who stand around glaring all day and being badasses. Now have a male PC come up to them and ask if they'd like to help bake a cake or sing.

They'll scoff and ignore him.

Now have a DM approach with the SAME request. Suddenly our dark anit-heroes cannot get enough of that bakin'! And boy, if they get to sing a song about flour, EVEN BETTER!

"I while away the hours,
consulting with the flours,
conferring with the grains..."

This gets even worse when there's a PC nearby who actually IS a baker, but who is left out of things for being new or unfamiliar.



It's pretty silly. But when you stop and realize nearly 90% of the population is just standing in place outside of the bar, it's bound to happen. They're one character for all that time so they're willing to completely reverse that personality JUST because they can finally do something. -_-

It's a bummer, but there's no real solution other than leading by example. Be the guy who goes, "Wait, what? Baking? No, I don't have any interest in it. Sorry, DM Baker Character!" Pull people away from the bar... to locations other than Elysium's beach, please. :wub:

This.... Is absolute, whole-hearted truth.

[*Synyster Spirit]

Here's something else. Grabby hands and MINE! Syndrome when it comes to plot-related items.

If I drop Plain Ordinary Item A on the ground or something, nobody will care about it.

But if a DM drops the exact same Plain Ordinary Item A people will go.. "Ooohhh what's that? DM dropped it so it must be important."

Yeah, most of the time it does have at least some significance.. But seriously, how would your character know that? Metagaming is poor RP and this sort of behavior IS metagaming.

[*Pashan01]

I had the most...mmm...delicious piece of DM attention the other day, delicious for its simplicity, a little one-to-one that allowed me to bring out my character nicely and react to something of Sigil - thank you DM, you know who you are....I'm still smiling from that short episode.

DM events are nice I guess though I personally dislike the large group ones, ones that take a long time to follow through (bah! to inflexible playtimes and timezones!) and can find them confusing! lol Props to DMs who can control the play direction still or manage the rabble during those.

But a wee bit of DM attention that brings out the character of Sigil, its NPCs and your own PC are....delicious. It doesn't take much to do that :) and would love to see DMs doing more of that for players in time :).

Sorry, bit off topic but I'm slow at work day, its Friday and I've run out of story to write up!

[*Mr_Otyugh]

So far the most amusing thing I've seen was when one of my PC guards got alerted when there came goblins out of a goblin cave. <,< It's like it was something unheard of!... now maybe if they had actually attacked somewhere or done something else than just come out of the cave it might've been worth noting :P

I generally just shrug off these things and remain as the voice of reason in character :P

The very rare times I adjust my characters behavior/attitude is to not entirely screw their characters by cutting them to pieces, turning them to dust, deliver each piece to different planes, hide them within common dust, throw them all the plane of air, use plane of fire as crematory, steal their soul, hide the soul somewhere and do all the possible procedures to prevent them from being brought back to life ;P