I was wondering, how often in your campaigns do your players have charcters get seriously injured or killed?

It rarely happens in my games and I tend to be a bit strict on some stuff so I was wondering if that was because my players are all really cautious and know TROS well or am I being too generous as a GM. I figure hearing from the forge gang about wounding and death in their campaigns would be helpful.

and while I am thinking of it, do you run campaigns that are more insular or more epic? I lean towards world changing epics myself but would like to hear what you guys do.

Player wounding is rarely an issue in my campaigns, either.

The players typically run when they know they're outmatched. :)

The scale of the campaign depends always on the SAs involved. If someone has a Drive: Restore the Glory of the Xanarian Empire, it's going to be an Epic campaign. :)

I've been running a Riddle game pretty steady since shortly after the GAMA trade show last year, and all total I've had 5 PC deaths.

The first one was probably the funniest. PC tangling with a very large and very angry bear. Shattered spine and busted up innards are not conducive to a long life.

Let's see if I can remember the total of non lethal injuries.

I'd say 30+. My games can get pretty gory sometimes.

I've run five sessions so far - all long and two of which all-niters (reminds me of schooldays).

I've had one death so far only. Running a one-niter, I got the lone PC to play a ghol captain chosen by dark fates to reunite the tribes and lead conquest across the lands.

The first village in their path, our PC halts the horde to confront the village's solitary defender - a grizzled old retired knight in ancient scraps of armour.

A risky dodge followed by a toss of dust into our PCs faces, and he was subsequently stabbed through the face by the old man.

I laughed ;)

And last nite, a PC playing a master fencer charged a rearing warhorse, but losing initiative and taking a lvl 4 hoof-wound to the face. That was less funny :) He recovered, but has lost his looks and most of his nose.

My game sessions generally revolve around small domestic situations - a minor noble wanting an ugly daughter's suiter investigated, a PC getting involved with a married woman, being apprenticed to a unscrupulour burglar. But in most cases, an epic, more far-reaching plot is taking place in the background, threads leading up towards a world-affecting event. The world being inexorably invaded, an evil force abducting gifted people (like that ugly daughter).

So far, it's worked and the players love TROS. I've posted other places what I reckon makes the game such a success. To sum up, the system really does encourage cool fights and meaningful roleplay - killing just isn't the easy answer anymore.

Thank god

Take care

Our crew up here has two TROS games running right now. One, Calder's Noctourne game, which has raised the bar on epic, and two, a game I run where the players are all part of a Ninja clan in a slightly fantastical historical Japan. I try to keep it as localized as possible. An epic style ninja game just screams of sillyness to me.

So far no one has died in Noctourne since we ported it to Riddle, but things have been really close a few times. Wait.. no. Ben's charecter Kent died in a giant, redeeming plot device where he and a (temporarily sane) insane dark God cast themselves into an abyss to save the world from another, darker god-thing. (as I said. Epic.) Nobody's died in combat yet.

I've killed off one charecter in my game, but he was mostly sacrificed to party stupidity. They were supposed to kill a samurai guard commander. For some reason they thought it would be a good idea to crash in on a planning meeting and take on a samurai and two ranking guards instead of waiting a few hours and assassinating them while they slept. I'm still amazed that only one of them died. The only reason that the rest of them made it is because the group Shukenga (sorcerer) blew the rest of his spell pool, picked up a guard tower and threw it into the courtyard, killing or cutting off the rest of the guard force from the fray. Three on one odds and the lone Samurai killed one ninja and nearly killed another before he went down. Moral of the story. Stupid ninja= Dead ninja.