You need a bit of both. I don’t want a cakewalk for my storytelling, but I want some break from the pain train every now and again.
Like, i’d love a good story, but I wanna work for it and risk things to get the reward at the end. I don’t want the game to be a formality, I wanna roll dice and worry about whether or not I’m gonna die sometimes
I want my characters to die. I didn’t realize until recently how alone I am in this, but the idea of playing a campaign almost more like a roguelite (or maybe a Pokémon nuzlock?) is so appealing to me. I want the consequences to be so real that a decent player might need 2 or 3 backup characters, where a happy ending isn’t garunteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in total tragedy. then the victories and successes would feel so much more earned, and campaigns would feel much less like on-rails experiences. plus failures can encourage creativity. a story where everyone just wins each task after the other is boring
[I want a game] where a happy ending isn’t guaranteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in a total tragedy.
100% this. While I don’t think meat grinder campaigns are the only way to achieve this, I’m enamored by running a game like this. I’m currently thinking about my next game, and I’m torn between a VtM game set in Ukraine during the Russian revolution, or a PF2e game set in a civil war of my own creation, and I think that would be one of the best situations to run a game like this. I want there to be loss, and I think the brutality of civil war is perfect for it.
I don’t know what VtM or PF2e mean, but I definitly agree with the rest of your sentiment. Id love to play a campaign in a brutal cival war setting like that
Thematically this is just a tone to set for running an RPG, but system wise…
If sticking to Sword and Sorcery…
I want the consequences to be so real that a decent player might need 2 or 3 backup characters, where a happy ending isn’t garunteed in the slightest and the DM is fine to end the campaign in total tragedy.
…You might like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Uses funky dice (optional), and you start with a few “level zero” characters that go through a deadly dungeon known as a “funnel.” The survivors end up as your level 1 character(s).
Maybe thematically it’s not about pull-no-punches storytelling or anything, but the system itself is brutal and rewards player cunning, wit, and luck, to overcome challenges. (And no, the DM isn’t required to be an adversarial psycho lol.)
Never played it myself but it falls into that category of “OSR” kinda games that try to revitalize the spirit of classic “Player smarts vs. Consequences” gameplay over theatrical plot-beats.
Apart from fantasy, my favorite system is Savage Worlds. It can run any genre, the game by default is “cinematic” and favors the players as heroes, but many mechanics make the numbers “swingy” so nothing is ever “not dangerous.” With the right rolls, a squire can behead the Orc war chief, or a lowly thug’s .38 caliber could put your spec-ops commando in critical condition!
It’s also heavily customizable. You want pulp adventures where heroes shrug off bullet wounds with sheer grit? Easy!
You want what you described up there where every victory is won tooth and nail? Try adding an optional rule where every wound causes a potentially permanent injury in a setting like “War of the Dead” or “Weird Wars Rome / I / II / Vietnam” and things are gonna get real tense, real quick.
Players have lots of tools at their disposal, but dice also “explode” both ways. Sometimes an inconsequential attack can one-shot you into bleeding out, but I guarantee the whole table erupts when a player goes for broke and the dice just keep poppin’! Love that system.
It’s very quick and easy for GMs to run too, I’d say. Great balance between narrative flexibility and tactical “crunch.” :)
My first and only dm was a huge dick
The start of the campaign village is being attacked, I picked a swordsman cus swing sword is easy probably good for a beginner
Anyways I roll a 20, DM hypes it up saying I have impeccable footwork, draw the blade from its sheath perfect, doing this epic buildup for about a minute or 2. Then he flatly says I miss my perfect swing because every enemy was 200 feet away
That was in middle school and now my GF is trying so hard to get me into Baldurs Gate and now it’s just a matter of me doing some DnD homework about classes and other stuff so I’m not going in 100% blind
Dont do any digging in bg3 mechanics or gameplay or story points until you hit a point you need to.
At least in my opinion, its nothing like that shitty DM. If bg3 was how DND games went more would play for sure.
Yeah there isnt even a difficulty that allows you to make mistakes like that. Although you can target the wrong thing by misclicking, it happens once every 20 hours of in game play lol
I feel like this comic embodies the personalities of Aabria Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan
DM 1: “We’re going to have a magical just-so adventure and everything will be on rails! I’ve got a bunch of art I’m going to show you and I expect everyone to do voices and play in whatever vague medieval fantasy pastiche passes for In Character. I want everyone to have a good time, but also cry when my NPC gives a twenty minute monologue. This game is my entire personality.”
DM 2: “Here’s a stack of character sheets. I found a dungeon in a magazine called The Infinite Rectal Immolator that looks cool as hell. You have a 25 point buy and three magic weapons of less than 15k gp each. Just ordered a stack of pizzas and a five gallon jug of Mountain Dew. Let’s see who makes it through. If we get bored, I’ve also got the new Halo game on XBox.”
And then there are the cyberpunk DMs that do both.
“Dang, my character has some sweet augs, I’m a one man army, time to take on the corpos!”
corpos bring a real army and then hit you with an orbital particle weapon
corpos bring a real army and then hit you with an orbital particle weapon
(Credits Roll)
🎵
[Verse 1] I couldn’t wait for you to come and clear the cupboards But now you’re gone and leaving nothing but a sign Another evening, I’ll be sitting reading in-between your lines Because I miss you all the time
[Chorus] So, what do you wanna do? What’s your point of view? There’s a party, screw it, do you wanna go? A handshake with you, what’s your point of view? I’m on top of you, I don’t wanna go 'Cause I really wanna stay at your housе And I hopе this works out🎵
If ya know, ya know. 😭 Lol
Eclipse phase does even better
You wake up in a resleeve pod, you start to slowly get the feel of your new body, you’re a thin girl with butterfly wing? Looks cool you never got used to the smell of that Gorilla hybrid morph you used before. Looking at your arm you see a large tattoo Wang body rental and start to think about how the triad will make you pay while wondering what you do here. You’re muse tells you that they restored a backup from last month, as you&ve been missing for over 2 weeks.
In EP, a TPK isn’t the end, but the start
