Why Do They Keep Dying?

         In my games, death is something that kind of happens a lot. It has gotten to a point where I have a stack of character sheets in my bedroom of characters that have died, all labeled "dead" at the top in big letters. "Why?", you are probably asking at this point. The answer is: I hate my players with a burning passion!

        I jest, of course. Most of the people that play in my games become friends outside of the game because that is the nature of my games. I definitely don't hate them. But I am 100% harsh on them, for a few reasons, which is going to be the point of this article.

"Good god, this dwarf cannot write anything concise!"

        The first thing that cements my style of play is the brutal gameplay. Most enemies are easy to kill, but so is the party if they don't work together and use tactics. Every class (except the Bard) is pretty important during a dungeon crawl or combat, because they all focus on different things. Bards, of course, were invented for my games to be a mix between charming faces and a Merchant class. 

        "Why do they keep dying, then?" you might be thinking at this point. Obviously, if they were so good as I say they should be, they shouldn't die. Well, that is because of a few reasons. The first, being random encounters, which were brought to my attention first by my father, and then later by a person I game with, who gave me more ideas to torture the party with them.

The party marches down a hallway into a 'forum post' of Trolls

        Random Encounters are the most devilish thing that I have ever used in my games, because they are, well, random, and they punish casters in a way that is still technically completely fair: resting in a dungeon is obviously going to have a chance of monsters (or other adventurers) running into you quite quickly. As is noted by all of my players, I have a bit of a problem with casters, which is why it is so important for me to have random encounters in my games.

        They are also frankly just fun. Having a chance for an unplanned battle to happen while the party tries to do something is really exciting from the GM standpoint, because it can cause interesting scenarios, like a Holy Warrior or Cleric performing an exorcism while monsters continuously wander into the room. Another thing I do in my games is purposefully not worry about balance in the dungeon.

"Boy, am I glad my Arachnophobia (6) never comes up in this game!"

    'Statistically', my friends have had more fun with rooms that don't really worry about balance compared to rooms where the challenge, and by extension fun, is injected into their veins at a fixed rate like some sort of sick torture method. I have heard a lot of good things about how I run my dungeons in that manner, because most people in my generation that I play with are used to everyone worrying about "challenge ratings" and "balance" and all that.

    What I say to balance is: "screw that, man!" Since I have dropped balancing, things become easier as a GM when writing rooms and the party tends to have more fun. It does, however, make some encounters ridiculously deadly on accident, especially when you are forced into fights because you hit a teleporter trap or one-way door. However, that doesn't make it unfun, and actually, in my experience, produces greater memories and jokes in the party, because of the screw up. 

    In the end, however, I really just try to make the game fun for everyone including myself, which can sometimes end up being me engaging in some sort of sick torture methods on my players or other times end up as giving the party a magical ring that grants them +3 ST at the cost of giving them Battle Rage (9). As long as we are all having fun, I am pretty content.