[DL] Who died and made you Marshall....

["Tyler Childers" <skylionlj@hotmail.com>]

Death in gaming is sorta like a microcosm of death in real life. 
Well...sorta. We can all take death pretty hard. Lose is a difficult thing 
to cope with. Without getting all angsty and gothy, let's just contend with 
gamer death.
Like real life, no one likes thier final ticket to be punched. Making and 
playing a character is an investment of time and energy (and in gaming, 
money). Lots of us take our hobby very seriously. I have noticed at least 
one trend in the ill-timed character death in my stead as a GM. The player's 
never blame themselves.
Like real life, they look to other causes. The dice. The GM. The other 
players. Someone picked up diet soda instead of the full octane version.
We call this denial. "C'mon Fred, did you really think that just by having 
the heroic hindrenc it would save you from taking on a platoon of undead 
johnnies with a malfunctioning single action. Keep in mind that the fear 
level of that holler was a 4 and you have a guts of 2d4.???"
Is it a bad player? Sometimes yes. Often, no.
The trick as a marshall is to gauge your players. I think the first couple 
of adventures should be a primer into the realities of the setting. Yes you 
have two fisted and the two gun kid. But that just means that the meanest 
killers with a rep to prove is going to come gunning for you. Yes you have 
AB's out the wazzo, that just gives you more chances to to bust, or get 
backlash, or dementia or lose Dominion, gain corruption, or just generally 
piss off the Nasty Powers that Be.
All four of my players really want to play special characters. We just got 
off a "freak the mundanes" in an All Flesh Must be Eaten game. I talked to 
them and made them awares of the dangers. They just get that glint in thier 
eye. Bring it, they say.
All Hell's a comin'. And the Reckoners are ridin' high in the saddle is my 
reply.
Give 'em good deaths? Hell, yeah. But if they screw the pooch, the pooch 
will screw back.

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