Let's talk about tabletop gaming, really quick. I have three DMs and they're all pretty neat. Ranchei runs an in-depth Pathfinder session with lots of little side missions and bounties, and his treasure roll of a scroll of Plant Growth somehow spiralled out of control, creating a campaign where the adventuring party are now prospective drug lords attempting to set up a massive marijuana operation in a fantasy realm. Being in an altered state of mind is nothing new for my summoner; he once was nothing more than a drunkard hobo with a familiar that wouldn't shut up. At least now he has a home. The next DM I've got is Kyon, who was actually my first DM in a short-lived D&D 3.5 campaign. He's restarted the gears, and together with a ragtag group of Tumblr folk we embark on an Incompetence Quest. I, the druid and huntress, arrows flicked with precision at her foes while she dreams of magical power beyond the wildest dreams of most. This campaign has more of a high-stakes plot unfolding, with hordes of undead monsters laying waste to villages, and a nebulous Big Bad waiting in the wings for us to one day face. My last DM is Nick, and Nick is also a player in Ranchei's campaign. It is a circle. Most of us involved in the Pathfinder campaign play in Nick's Call of Cthulhu campaign. It is a different beast, and one that fills me with dread. As of this writing, it is the only time I have properly lost a character in tabletop gaming. Lee Brahm, charismatic journalist, ripped in two by a Thing That Should Not Be. A private investigator now takes his place, and he aids his uneasy alliance by searching for rumors of dark cultists.
All three DMs have one thing in common; they are human. That sounds like a "no shit" statement, but bear with me. I don't know much about the DMing process just yet, but I don't think any of the three would WANT to see a total party kill. They work with the rules, and create encounters that are fitting for the party's strength at the time. Sometimes things go south, like those goddamn teleporting leopard things in Pathfinder with DR 5 and an anti-magic field. It took us three hours to kill them. For the most part, things are fair and if you get diddled it is the fault of chance and dice rolls. That is not the case with Icewind Dale. A friend got it for me, and that friend was very nice... but holy lord did this game humble me. I rolled up a party of 6 and focused their best stats on what I thought would be good for them. High DEX for the Druid/Ranger, high INT for the wizards and so forth. After exploring the starting town and roleplaying a little, it was time to go into a cave and fight some orcs. Of which there were about 20. Who could easily one or two-shot my level 1 party. Combat seemed to work a lot differently here. For one, it's fast. 6 seconds a round means a damn slugfest where my guys try to hit the orcs. As opposed to the slower, turn-based feel of Maptool or Roll20 where I move a person when my initiative comes up and make a roll. I'm still not sure what I did wrong. I even remade my party to have beefy CON scores so they had more HP, but it didn't help. I still got steamrolled. This should not have been an issue, and yet it was. My DM this time was the Machine. The Machine, unlike Ranchei or Kyon or Nick, doesn't give a fig about trying to be "fitting", it seems. Here are 20 orcs. Did the first three wipe you out? Too fucking bad. It's ruthless. It's ridiculous. I eventually did it, by savescumming and resting outside over and over again. I don't feel like that was the right way to do it. For a first quest it was brutal. Maybe I'm just soft when it comes to RPGs. I accept that something is wrong with me as opposed to the game, or I made my party incorrectly... but at the same time, it doesn't FEEL like I should have been so thoroughly destroyed. The orc boss was even worse; straight-up OHKO on the main fighters. Magic Missile helped to hit him initially, but I only got one of those a day from the wizard. After that, she was spent.
This became bitching really fast, but I still like the idea of adventuring and whatnot. I guess I just like the tabletop things more. My DMs are nicer than a hard game, that's for sure.
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