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[Draignean]

As I said before, the job of the DM is to cause the characters grief and pain in order to keep them interested in bettering themselves and the world.

If you don't inflict pain on your players at every opportunity, there's no point even bothering to DM.

I know I'm on Bay12 which is home to the most sadistic gamers on planet Earth, and maybe I'm just bad at picking up sarcasm, but to me that feels like a surefire way to completely desensitize your players to all that "pain and suffering" and actually make them stop caring.


You really need thes ups and downs, a sense of ebb and flow if you want to avoid that sort of burnout IMHO. Easy victories and low-risk periods have as much of a reison d'etat as periods of struggle and stress. There's a reason most movies, stories and games which try to make you care about the world and characters don't put you through constant pain and suffering at literally every opportunity - some do it more than others, yes, and that helps set their tone, but even they give you some respite before proceeding to the ass-kicking.

Ah, but that's the job of the players. When the players actually win, you let them have their victory and you don't spoil it- but you need to give them a world that needs those victories. Pain comes in many flavors, and a good DM is remiss if they just attempt to crush them with the stick of starving orphans and rapist murder-barons who laugh and snark constantly. I think you misunderstand me, and attribute to narrow a definition to the word 'pain'.

Give players the pain of being weak- struggling to better themselves, finding victory and meaning in becoming strong enough to stand against the forces that once dominated them.

Give players the pain of being powerful- struggling to protect the things close to them, finding victory in defending those who cannot defend themselves.

Give players the pain of being alone- struggling to find connection and meaning amongst alien beings and distant horizons, finding victory in understanding their world and finding either a way home or a way to make this strange place home.

Give players the pain of being connected- struggling to balance laws and morals amidst a web of allies, enemies, and intrigue, finding victory in the becoming part of something bigger without selling who they are.

Give players the pain of being meaningless- struggling to find a place in world which seems to have no need or want of them, finding victory in carving out a niche where they belong.

Give players the pain of being responsible- struggling to fulfill their obligations in the face of adversity, finding victory in staving off failure to another dawn.

Life is pain. Sometimes it's the dull ache of failing a friend, or the sharp and acid burn of feeling a coward, but just as often it's the dull joint-ache of knowing that you have duties which you cannot shirk, or the frenetic jaggedness in your skin when you feel like you know you're doing as well as you can but dread the failure you cannot see. If you're very lucky indeed, then it might even be the sweet, sharp pain of being truly happy, and knowing that it cannot last.

The job of the DM is to craft pains and hardships, so that the players may rise above them. What kind of pain, and in what measure, is the art of being a good DM- and varies wildly depending on who you're playing with.

[smjjames]

I kinda dislike how 4th and 5th make it near impossible for characters to actually die.  They may fall in combat, but they never stay down.  And then they pop back up like loony tunes when the encounter ends.

4th, maybe. I only played a few sessions.

5th? Most definitely not. If the DM lets the party take an uneventful short rest in the middle of a dungeon after every boo-boo, that's on the DM, not the game.

This is very important in my opinion. Short rests after every encounter should be discouraged, especially during more dangerous areas/important times. Don't harass them constantly, but if they try to take a nap after combat in a densely-populated dungeon then have the dungeon inhabitants take the fight to them instead of quietly waiting in their boxes for their turn

Well yeah, if they try to rest in a place where (or when) it doesn't make sense for them to rest as if it was real time, they should get interrupted or worse.

[NullForceOmega]

snip'd

While the above conversation on the mortality of PCs and the ramifications of their death and suffering is interesting, I'm going to actually address Jimmy's post.

This is D&D, it has a spell called "resurrection", and an even more impressive version called "True Resurrection", which allow you to bring dead people back to life.  If you've got a sixteenth level PC that just bought it, there may very well be interested parties who would very much like to bring that person back, either to exploit them or because their interests align.  There are any number of methods at your disposal as DM if you think a PC deserves another chance (or just the ability to continue their story.)

Don't get so caught up in the rules that you forget that you're building a story, if there can be reasonable justification for the PC or party to come back, then that's fine.  Just make sure you consider the consequences of it.

[Digital Hellhound]

I'm probably going to run a Rime Western game here as play-by-post (with the spiffy name of 'The Rime: A Frostpunk Western RPG'), because the idea continues to roll around in the back of my head. Now, it's my own spin on the concept, but it retains the 'steadily expanding frontier', 'grim people in heavy coats fumbling for their revolvers with frostbitten fingers' core aspects, at least. The world's not an ice sheet, but rather simply covered by an icy and seemingly endless black sea. The sea level is continually falling, revealing ever more land to be settled - but this land is so cold from the embrace of the sea it can't sustain any crops for at least a generation. As the seas recede and the edge of the frontier moves out, these lands gradually warm up and nature spreads in from inland.

So, we get a frontier of ice and snow, and a nifty reason for settlers to be coming here (claiming land that will be worthwhile if you just hang on long enough), but we still get an inner region of the world that produces industry, food and city slickers.

The sea's not entirely lifeless, though. Edible kelp, hardy sea creatures and native Mer have existed there quite fine for millennia. The Mer (your basic aquatic humanoid people) are faced with losing their homes to the merciless growth of land. They can move deeper to rebuild or try to live on land (where they survive alright, when they can regularly access water). Some have taken to attacking human settlers, figuring they're to blame for the sea levels falling. There's some pretty obvious parallels to real history here, I realize now. Sea cattle are an important food source, too - ranchers drive herds of 'em up and down the edges of the Rime and through artificial canals inland to be slaughtered.

There's all kinds of stuff I want to do here, but that'll wait for the game. Mechanically, I'll handle things with a d20 system. Things are intended to be pretty brutal and unforgiving. Characters will die without a heat source at night. Combat very easily kills, so you'll want to be the first one to draw and fire. There's no HP system, but rather Wound levels, where attack rolls can result in glancing hits, wounds, severe wounds or death depending on degrees of success. There's some things to offset this, so the game's not outright murderous towards the players, but I feel it's a good way of representing the harshness of life in the Rime.

The physics or metaphysics of the world raise a lot of questions, sure, but I've tried to make something internally consistent. It's an alternative world, so it's all good.

[GiglameshDespair]

Sounds cool. Makes more sense to me that there's actually land, since I feel civilisation advanced enough to give that frontier feel would be unlikely to develop on an ice sheet. No metals really, after all.

How do the ranchers herd aquatic creatures?

[Interus]

Well the "Massive snowflake crystallizing the void into matter" idea is already crazy magical, so if you were going with that, then you'd just say that the gods made metal.

I like the receding sea level too though. There's a lot you can do with that. If the Mer build structures, there would be probably be all kinds of previously submerged structures dotting the landscape, and not everybody would have been willing to stay behind and take care of those. Instead of artificial canals, or in addition to those, you could have deep cracks in the land that also provide water passage further inland. You've clearly thought about the cowboy aspect, but you might consider trappers too. Everybody needs fur, and from what I remember of history class (which was longer ago than I like to think about), trapping brought a lot of people to the Canadian frontier. You could borrow a lot from mountain men and the fur trade in addition to just cowboys. Actually, just stealing from Canadian, American, and Mexican history, there's a massive amount of inspiration available. Not to mention all the movies, songs, and books. Actually, I'm a little bit mad now that there aren't more rpg's set in frontiers like this.

[Mephisto]

Or you can liberally steal from other settings.

Shard RPG, for instance, is set on a world with no metal. Instead, people use this crystal that forms in the mountains. Given the frozen setting being discussed, super-ice being worked into tools could make sense.

[Digital Hellhound]

How do the ranchers herd aquatic creatures?

A combination of lures and good old-fashioned wrangling, I figure. They use chemical/natural lures to bring the herds close to shore, then rope the lead animal and drive it where they need it to go. The rest of the herd follows that one all the way right to the slaughter. I imagine the sea cows (who deserve an actual name) are big, strong animals, so it takes a lot of men to keep one contained. I guess you could have men in boats holding a perimeter around the herd, too. Probably not a great job, since the sea is lethally cold to humans and the sea life might tip a boat over. Their job might also be to keep away predators that might disperse the herd. Enterprising ranchers would hire Mer for this job instead, I imagine.

I like the receding sea level too though. There's a lot you can do with that. If the Mer build structures, there would be probably be all kinds of previously submerged structures dotting the landscape, and not everybody would have been willing to stay behind and take care of those. Instead of artificial canals, or in addition to those, you could have deep cracks in the land that also provide water passage further inland. You've clearly thought about the cowboy aspect, but you might consider trappers too. Everybody needs fur, and from what I remember of history class (which was longer ago than I like to think about), trapping brought a lot of people to the Canadian frontier. You could borrow a lot from mountain men and the fur trade in addition to just cowboys. Actually, just stealing from Canadian, American, and Mexican history, there's a massive amount of inspiration available. Not to mention all the movies, songs, and books. Actually, I'm a little bit mad now that there aren't more rpg's set in frontiers like this.

Indeed. I'm not sure what the trappers would trap, hmh. There could be amphibious sea life that comes on land or is stranded on it, at least, or maybe animal life native to the Rime that keep migrating outwards as the Rime expands (polar bears and such?). It would make the wilderness a more interesting place in-game, for sure. The thought of everyone being decked out in gloriously white polar bear pelts is also fairly cool.

Natural 'rivers' (uh, ex-oceanic trenches?) might make more sense than artificial canals. You could end up building slaughterhouses where they end, rather than going through the massive effort of constructing the canals. I imagine particularly ambitious ranchers would build them, though, or even artificial lakes inland to keep their sea cows in.

If the sea near the shore freezes over, that opens some more possibilities, both for trappers and cowboys. You could trap/fish through the ice, maybe drive the herds by walking on the ice and stomping on it while they're beneath or such, too.

[smjjames]

What about a reason for the falling sea levels? Like an advancing ice age? Could be another reason for the expansion to new lands since they're getting pushed out by advancing glaciers.

[scriver]

I imagine the sea cows (who deserve an actual name)

Kelpers

[Trekkin]

What about a reason for the falling sea levels? Like an advancing ice age? Could be another reason for the expansion to new lands since they're getting pushed out by advancing glaciers.

I don't know how much we really want to delve into the why of the setting; the whole concept sacrifices a degree of physical/meterological accuracy for the sake of style anyway, so trying to force it to make sense beyond what's player-facing is probably going to end in frustration.

So why not have the trappers trap penguins and walruses and polar bears all at once, and maybe train seals to act like sheepdogs to herd the hydrokine (or whatever "sea cows" end up being called) around, all in service to settling a receding ocean that's curiously slow to warm?

[Interus]

When I was talking about trapping, I was actually picturing giant beavers, and imagined them building huge dams in the trenches. Of course, the big problem with that is that there probably aren't massive forests in this formerly underwater tundra. Though they could make the dam out of chunks of ice, because the more ice the better. I actually didn't think of wolves and bears, which I consider sort of standard for enemy wildlife, until after I considered giant versions of beavers, muskrats, ermines, and rabbits. There might also be moose or caribou, woolly bisons or mammoths, and maybe saber-toothed tigers, since there should be at least one big cat. Polar bears are great though.

A lot of those probably couldn't survive normally in your world. If the place is big enough, they might survive on the inner edge of the frontier. I'm assuming there's a lot of uncultivated land that's reached the point where it can support extensive plant life, instead of just moss and shrubs. Still, there's a lot of places in the world that aren't particularly hospitable but have a lot of wildlife.

Maybe I'm too worried about the ecology and environment, but I was playing with the idea of a bounty hunter who's philosophy is that the environment is a much more dangerous opponent than any outlaw. Also, I imagine he looks like the old bounty hunter in Hateful 8.

[Trekkin]

When I was talking about trapping, I was actually picturing giant beavers, and imagined them building huge dams in the trenches. Of course, the big problem with that is that there probably aren't massive forests in this formerly underwater tundra.

Well, why shouldn't some kind of kelp grow tough, tree-like stems to better resist breakage and predation, or even seal itself against salt water well enough to support itself in air? It's a stretch, but as I said, so is the whole setting; as long as we're having these massive changes in sea level, kelp trees aren't the craziest things they could expose.

[Jimmy]

You could do like most sci-fi conversions of fantasy tropes do, and just slap genre-specific descriptors onto the front of standard material, then call it a day.

Examples:
Space-goblins
Space-dragons
Space-wizards
Space-demons
Space-magic
Space-dungeons
Space-guns
Space-murderhobos

Replace "space" with "sea" and you're set for your underwater game.

[smjjames]

It's not underwater though, and the players would either have to be mermen or otherwise using some sort of protective gear to go into water cold enough to kill a human in minutes. So, going underwater in digital hellhounds idea of a game would be all but ruled out.