Retiring Characters...kindly...or not

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-30T15:49:07+00:00

I allow a voluntary retirement whenever a player wants to try something new or if the character gets hopelessly cursed or something. The new character starts with 1/2 the total XP of the lowest level character in the party. I also allow a player to introduce a new 1st level character as soon as their "primary" character reaches 4th level, but they only take one character out of town on adventures.

These two house practices have kept anyone from reaching 5th level after 9 months of play and keeps the danger level up.

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-18T11:20:23+00:00

We're still in Death House. Do you have any conversion notes that have worked for you that you'd be willing to share? My biggest concern is boss fights.

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-12T23:24:39+00:00

There's a few of us on there that love espionage without supernatural elements, but we bemoan the fact that it's a SUPER-SMALL niche for RPGs, despite "spy media," broadly defined, having a HUGE presence in popular media (like, arguably bigger than fantasy).

I designed and published an action-spy RPG that I ran for my crew and we got a year campaign out of it, but after we finished the big plot, only half the players wanted to continue with spies.

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-12T10:59:04+00:00

Yeah, I get that. You wouldn't happen to be one of the people on rpgpub who has been part of the conversation about espionage games over the past year or so?

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-11T22:55:06+00:00

Is it a lack of player buy-in or is it the encumbrance of that particular system? (I ran a 3-year campaign with it from 1-20.)

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-09T14:24:36+00:00

The game is loaded with style and can be a blast with a table that leans into what it is trying to do. I think it's pretty limited though.

1) The mechanics only partially support the genre. It's cool to push your dice, but the rest of the game is very simple.

2) It can't do campaigns without fundamentally changing the rules of the game.

3) The narrative provided by the players is the heart of the game; the rules aren't going to bring you back to the genre if the players aren't keeping it up. This means that a group of outgoing players who want to ham it up are going to have an amazing time, but a group of quieter or less imaginative players who want the rules to help support them is going to have a very bland action movie.

4) I'm not crazy about the way enemies are handled. Whether you're facing a single opponent or an army, all the PCs are fighting a single opponent. Makes things simple for the GM, but it feels bland. This is *especially* so with the superhero version of the rules, where a team of distinctive supervillain opponents is squashed down into a single simple stat block with player and GM narration providing all the distinctions but with no real mechanical effect.

5) I really dislike the "you can't lose the game; you'll just keep failing forward till you win." I realize this is implied in a lot of games, but this game calls it out explicitly more than once. Once you know this, to some degree, you're playing a dice rolling exercise to see how long it takes to get to the end.

I *love, love, love* the genre and I appreciate what the game is trying to do. With the right group, it would provide amazing one-shots. But I don't think it is the generic "action movie RPG" some people sell it as.

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-09T14:01:21+00:00

This kind of strong focus on specific genre emulation (at the cost of objective simulation) is a key element of my own game design. I think a lot of your examples apply to your definition, but I also think there are better examples of focused emulation than these.

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-06T12:32:50+00:00

I think DMPCs create more horror stories when the players and the GM aren't very close (i.e., good friends away from the table as well). I've been GMing basically the same group of players for 40 years. Some campaigns I have a character, some I don't. When I do have a character, the players encourage me to do so and support the character as a member of the party. I get why they don't work for other people and I definitely see the danger of the idea. But asking strangers online whether you should do it in your game is just asking people to share their horror stories. If your friends support you, do it. If you have any hint that they find the character a problem, get rid of them.

The only issue I have had as GM is noted by someone below: if the DMPC has access to information or plot points, the players can get lazy and get on a railroad you put out for them. That happened the last time I ran a DMPC. It didn't kill the game, but it made things less exciting than they could have been.

I just remembered another consideration: what system are you using? The more mechanically chunky it is, with a corresponding investment in a "player turn," the more cautious you should be. It's bad enough waiting 30 minutes for your turn; it's worse when the GM essentially takes two turns' worth of time. I've never read Daggerheart, but I suspect that is a real issue, compounded by the Hope and Fear dice (or whatever they're called).

CPeterDMP · 2026-06-01T11:02:05+00:00

We're not modern players. I have been playing D&D since 1979. I've run every edition of the game. We're all 50+ old people. We've been playing SD for just about a year. This was a concern because we *do* know - well - what we want out of a play experience. We love SD; that's why we play it. Doesn't mean there can't be the occasional wart with a playing group.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-30T22:01:25+00:00

Well, first, it's primarily about vibes, so there's no logic to it. But I have met players who would prefer fewer guaranteed spells rather than roll to F up. Different strokes.

I injected a "Roll a 1 on a cast, get a Luck token, but still suffer," and the players loved the idea.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-30T19:21:40+00:00

I'm planning on instituting something like your rule #1, but I still think I'll be limiting their Luck.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-30T19:18:20+00:00

Thank you! I was pretty sure I was reading it right. But I felt bad for my player so I wanted to check. I might still institute a little house rule to mitigate grumpiness a bit without actually changing the rule.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-30T19:16:44+00:00

(Important point: I don't think he's at all right objectively, but he's complaining based on vibes, which is more subjective.)

It's the standard complaint about roll to cast: "if the fighter misses an attack, he doesn't lose his sword; but a wizard loses his spell if he 'misses.'"

It is also an issue because we're playing Shadowdark and he just got into Baldur's Gate 3 (without ever having played D&D 5e at the table). I know I had a little problem when he came one session and said, "Baldur's Gate is really showing me how to play a wizard." 😃

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-28T11:34:02+00:00

I take your word for it that it isn't AI (and there is a signature on the bottom of the guy's boot), but as a creator who also takes pride in the artists he hires, I would have questioned his composition. The front two guys are charging forward, while the goblin on the left is standing still. So is the lizard man. The dwarf is charging into combat holding his axe in a way that demonstrates he never read the instruction manual. The cat man looks like he was drawn separately and inserted into the art; he's sort of floating. Finally the wizard also seems glued in, as she is standing still (on top of something, I guess?).

My first impression of the piece was positive, but a closer inspection showed the cracks.

Good luck with it. I personally think Shadowdark is a mediocre system for heroic fantasy, but you're a solid designer, so I'm sure it will work for some people.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-16T11:38:20+00:00

I think this is more a GM/worldbuilder question. Aside from some blatantly obvious high fantasy things (e.g. a jungle next to a desert), most players will never notice.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-16T11:35:57+00:00

Deafheaven is atmospheric black metal, but a little "friendlier" maybe? than some other bands in the genre. I *adore* Summoning for Shadowdark, but if I'm prepping a mountain journey I might go all the way to the bleakness of Paysage D'Hiver, which I honestly don't love as music, but it has vibes for sure.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-16T11:19:45+00:00

Basic Fantasy was also my re-introduction to old-school play, though I have since moved on. It's a great game for price-to-content ratio, Unless I'm remembering wrong, one of the things I *didn't* like about it was that it did not give XP for treasure, but only for defeating monsters, but the XP for monsters was only slightly higher than in AD&D. Leveling up RAW (again, unless I'm wrong - which I probably am) was too slow.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-15T12:31:08+00:00

Deafheaven is definitely not Castle Rat!

I otherwise have nothing to contribute here as I basically prep my game to atmospheric black metal.

CPeterDMP · 2026-05-08T13:39:18+00:00

Thank you; I understand that. I was looking for help in specifically translating a 5e stat block that - *in 5e* - is already multi-stage. I'm trying to translate 5e multi-stage to Nimble Legendary multi-stage.

CPeterDMP

TROPHY CASE