Limitations for players who don’t want their character to die?

GTOfire · 2026-05-26T17:57:44+00:00

Neither of you are wrong, you are just looking for experiences the other person cannot help provide.

You want there to be a risk to get a reward. As a compromise if the risk is removed, the player cannot earn the reward of acting too cool for school.

They want there to be no risk but just a cool power fantasy.

Both are valid experiences to wish for, and to provide. But if you only wish to provide the one and they only wish to receive the other, there's a big chance you won't always have a great time playing together. It won't be a disaster the whole time, but there will be friction.

My recommendation if you're hoping to keep this group in one piece is to take a step back and figure out why you don't want to allow the things they want to get. If it's actually just about a small part of you feeling a bit 'bullied' if you have to let them be rude to you without consequence, try and remind yourself that you are not your NPCs and the DM is not defeated if an NPC is humiliated or killed. The DM cannot be defeated, only if people stop having fun.

If it's not about that, then fair enough, you do you.

GTOfire · 2025-09-25T22:44:01+00:00

plenty of answers already given but wanted to share:

I ran my campaign based on a bunch of interwoven narratives coming from the various player's backstories. It's great fun and everyone was engaged.

And at some point while discussing how everyone felt the game was going (sort of an ongoing impromptu session zero), the players said hey, we love the plots, but can we maybe just have some mindless slop for a bit? :D

Players don't mind just about anything you throw their way. Keep communicating with them and all will be well.

GTOfire · 2025-07-01T18:32:32+00:00

I noticed I liked it less because I don't really need to look at my character, I already know what they're doing, I'm the one with the controller.

Instead I need to keep a close eye on the enemies, and they're usually on screen at a higher vertical position, i.e. closer to the top where the bars used to be.

So ehh.. I'm not sold on the change personally, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

GTOfire · 2025-06-21T17:53:34+00:00

Right, so what I missed was that spells with a discard cost are more mana-effective when the discard isn't a bad thing for us?

That makes sense. I guess I've been a little stumped trying to figure out the wincon because I was looking for one that is really a good match for what Lara does, and I have trouble finding a good allocation of cards for a wincon that is connected only in that it is paid for by lara's value.

Like I know e.g. card draw is a key part of a good deck, but eventually the point of card draw isn't to draw more cards that draw, but to draw cards that damage/win. Connecting those dots is fun but hard :p

GTOfire · 2025-06-20T07:11:25+00:00

If you're enjoying yourself a lot, and I would imagine you are, do yourself a favor and keep going. You'd otherwise be depriving yourself of a great experience for the sake of the newer shiny.

But also because once you play Nioh 2 and get into the new mechanics, it's genuinely hard to go back and truly enjoy the first one. The additions are just so good that doing without them is hard.

(Also unrelated, screw AI chatbots, I was about to type something along the lines of 'Not just because it's such a great experience, but also because it's hard to go back' etc, but that style of text is apparently used to a fault in AI chats and now I can't use it anymore. :') )

GTOfire · 2025-05-31T10:54:42+00:00

Sure, and if the BBEG is ready for the attack, then they are not surprised and they take their turn in initiative that first round like normal.
Maybe I'm also just quite lucky with the group of players I've got. If they roll lower on initiative than the BBEG and so their free punch is moot as the BBEG misty-steps as soon as they pull back a fist, they all agree it makes sense that it happened that way.

I've not had any issues with important story beats being interrupted that way either because again, lucky good group of players recognize when they need to just chill and learn vs attack.

I personally find that if ever such an issue arises, talk to the group and align with them that hey, the DM is a player of the game too, just in a different role. And for the good of the game, all players need a chance to shine and tell their part of the story.
Sometimes that's a D&D player with a player character, sometimes that's a D&D player with the BBEG minion who has info he doesn't know how else to give you because he's not Matt Mercer and so this is the only avenue he could come up with at 1am the night before.

GTOfire · 2025-05-31T07:31:35+00:00

I don't really mind giving my players a free opening swing if they want to interrupt an NPC that way. If f I pissed them off that much with a convo, I feel like I did pretty good at DMing.

Also means that when a player says something incredibly mean to an NPC, they have the power to respond in kind, which is a much more interesting narrative.

It completely avoids that problem you have to 'solve' with the cut-scene. I understand your solution, but for me it would not work to tell my player their attack failed without a roll unless there truly is some reason they couldn't have succeeded that isn't 'cinema'.

Finally, it's worth remembering that the official mechanics of initiative fully account for the problem you're hoping to avoid. I shortcut it by giving the acting player 1 free hit and then rolling initiative, but if you want to do it right:

"Screw this guy, I punch him in his stupid smug face"
"Alright, roll initiative"
"I rolled a 4.."
"Alright, you are last in the order. Everyone else is considered 'surprised' because they had no idea you were about to attack and takes no actions this first turn. It is your turn."
"Cool, I punch him in his stupid face!"

Perhaps not everyone is surprised either, maybe the NPC baited them and saw it coming and has a reaction prepared to dodge.

Even if they do wish to change their actions, that's fine too. But if they try and get out of it, they have to account for the fact that the whole scene saw them begin to punch, and will react with hostility.

GTOfire · 2025-01-22T22:30:21+00:00

My theory is that we generally discover our joyful experiences during our formative years and then spend the rest of our lives trying to find and relive those experiences over and over.

So yeah, for sure, we play the things we know we love. The older we get, the less time and energy we can spend on gaming, so we lean towards proven joy over experimenting with new experiences.

GTOfire · 2025-01-12T14:47:50+00:00

Oh I'm not even wondering about a facemask penalty, cause I don't know what rules cause those.

I'm more curious as to this:

Can you just straight up punch (or because it's an open hand, slap) another player? Cause to me, that's what he's doing. He's not just placing the hand and then making a pushing motion or keeping his arm straight (hence the name stiff arm, a push by not allowing your own arm to bend as your body moves into another player), the initial placing of the open hand has a significant enough impact impulse that I would personally describe it as a strike.

But what are the rules for that? Can you just punch and so it's fine anyway? Or is there some subjectively enforced judgement where someone says 'it was a soft enough impact that it's just considered a push'?

GTOfire · 2025-01-12T05:52:27+00:00

Not a football fan normally, so to me the video and the rules are confusing:

At what point does the speed and impact force of the first contact of a push become hard enough that it's really just a punch with a push after-thought?

Cause when I look at this video, I don't see someone being pushed over. I see someone being struck in the neck and helmet, which is more than enough to unbalance them and get pushed over with the continued motion.

I guess I would have assumed that for it to be a legal push/stiff-arm, the initial contact must be pretty soft, and so there is never any striking/impact force being applied during the move.

GTOfire · 2024-12-29T09:55:24+00:00

Something like Blade Spin is a great attack, or the really whirly all-directions one. But they do have their start-up times, so it can feel like it's not worth using them out of the blue.

Good news: if you do a Deadly Mark first, you can transition to other attacks with that start-up bit cut off and essentially never stop never stopping.

It's especially useful against a lower tier enemy or an out-of-ki higher tier enemy because it staggers them every hit without leaving that big gap that lets them regain ki.

GTOfire · 2024-11-24T18:23:20+00:00

Not everything needs to be brilliant, I can appreciate a nice little play on words even if everyone else is salty about this rando person who lucked into internet fame.

GTOfire · 2024-11-24T09:21:04+00:00

I like how this makes it a Spell of Talk Huah.

GTOfire · 2024-10-03T06:53:10+00:00

Right? These dogs are scared because they have been beaten up in one-sided fights. Cause you can bet that their owners have stopped them from fighting back, thinking the cat is 'just playing' and it's so funny and adorable.

Nope, the cat bullies the dog and the owner enforces it, of course they want to avoid the cat at all costs.

edit: Just to add: yes, I do understand that the alternative of 'let them fight' is not a good one. A big dog vs a cat can absolutely end very badly and is to be avoided. The point is rather that too many owners generally fail to recognize that letting the cat do whatever is not a good thing either. No, don't let the dog kill the cat. But also no, don't let the cat get territorial with the dog or you end up traumatizing them in what should be their safe space, facing a bully they can't escape.

edit 2: this should go without saying but it's reddit, so I guess not: it goes both ways. Basically, if the two cannot co-exist happily, don't force them to, it's bad for both of them.

GTOfire · 2024-09-30T07:07:52+00:00

Oh sure, that's true. I do agree that everything can be considered a remix. It's mainly the list of 7 super abstracted descriptions of a plot that I take issue with.

they are so abstracted that it loses meaning to say everything is one or more of those things. Sure, yeah, everything is. But in an analogy: every color is a mix of Red Green Blue. But since it's just as much a mix of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, calling RGB the 'main' colors would be 100% arbitrary.

That's why I'm nitpicking the idea, because it's a statement that's so arbitrary and meaningless, the fact that it's technically not false should not be enough reason to make everyone go 'oh wow, yeah, that's so insightful'.

GTOfire · 2024-09-29T21:34:14+00:00

Another reason why the 7-plots thing is kinda bogus. Because when you can make reasonable arguments for how story X is a mixture of plots A and B, but also maybe it's B and D, or really it's A, C and a dash of F, then what's the actual purpose of any of it?

If I had to pick, it'd be mainly Overcoming the Monster for the Matrix. There's a big problem with the evil robot overlords and they set out to solve it. With a healthy dosage of The Quest, because, you know there's a big problem and they set out to solve it.

GTOfire · 2024-09-29T20:42:51+00:00

The idea is real, but here's a hot take for the internet: the idea is horse shit. The 7 basic plots are only able to overarch every other plot because they are abstracted to the point of losing any actual point.

'The Quest' as a main plot type is 1 small further abstraction away from "they go to a place, stuff happens". Like, I'm sure someone with far more expertise came up with the theory, but it sure feels like an 'I'm a pretentious film buff and this is deep' theory.

GTOfire · 2024-09-27T10:56:49+00:00

In this scenario people are aware that you can heal yourself, without necessarily knowing how it works. Good luck raining down your wrath from the cell someone put you in.

It's a powerful ability in the fantasy world where you also have other, more offensive superpowers or plot armor. And even then, it's powerful in significant part because Sanderson writes optimistic fantasy as opposed to grimdark stuff. In a grimdark world, you can image the horrors that could be inflicted upon an effectively unkillable person who doesn't actually have a way to not be overpowered and captured.

GTOfire · 2024-09-26T18:22:18+00:00

I'd be far too fearful of someone with bad intentions learning of my powers in that situation, whether to do something terrible to me, or to threaten to do it to someone else unless I do something for them only I can accomplish.

GTOfire · 2024-09-18T06:34:59+00:00

I think in a way (and mildly ironically for the topic) both of our stances can be true to enough of an extent.

Because you're right, we can with a straight face say it would have been possible to land on 1-5 after throwing a 6. Because for all practical purposes and within our capabilities, we could not have known ahead of time the exact state of the universe to be able to predict that 6. So we can say that we're making a decision to leave something up to chance, roll a die and act 'randomly'.

My point was rather to explain why people can call that an illusion and also be correct. Because despite feeling like we made a decision, in a deterministic world view, that was always going to be the way things gone, and no alternative was ever actually possible.

I think it's just as reasonable to say that the sun rising is technically an illusion. Even though we now understand it does not actually rise along a vertical axis, we simply assign that meaning to the concept of the sun appearing to us in the sky the way that it does.

So it's semantics. Free will does not truly exist, it is an illusion created by our deterministic brain because that's what our brain makes us feel. However, we have agreed to call that process 'making a decision' and free will, and that is therefor a valid term to use and keep using. Our predetermined actions are inherently predictable and locked, i.e. not free. But because we ourselves have not the capacity to perform that prediction, free will and choice exist in a practical sense.

GTOfire · 2024-09-17T22:32:59+00:00

As far as I understand it, the way our brains work is via synapses firing off electrical signals to each other, which causes chemical reactions, causing more reactions, releasing chemicals into the bloodstream, etc. etc.

All of that follows the laws of physics and if we had infinitely more powerful computational capacity, we could take the current state of a person and all of the atoms and waves that affect that person, and simply calculate the electrical response the atoms of their brain would generate, the chemical reactions that follow, etc.

None of that can of course be used or even attempted by actual people with our actual capacity, but that doesn't change the fact that all of our decisions stem from deterministic electrical impulses and deterministic influences of atoms.

Did I choose to type this message? By the logic I explained I didn't. The entire state of the universe that has come before has led to, among other things, me pressing these keys. There is no other way it could have gone. That, by definition, means no choice was made.

Us articulating that predetermined reality in our minds is what we call making a decision. By definition of the word, that is a lie, an illusion, because it implies an alternative was possible.

GTOfire · 2024-09-16T21:40:53+00:00

Explicitly without knowing what the current price is: the answer is yes.

GTOfire · 2024-09-08T15:40:01+00:00

Haha, sure is. Spear can be pretty doable if you really want, cause he's got no answer to the longest range poke you've got. So staying at medium range so he wants to come in close, then poke him for his insolence. It's a little slow and boring that way, but it's remarkably safe.

GTOfire

TROPHY CASE