How deadly do you run your games to be?

As a GM, if you had a vast Doom pool, would you be inclined to spend as much Doom as possible to cause as much damage as possible? I.e. to make sure that at as many Stresses are reduced to inflict at least one Wounds/Traumas (or two, for the first successful attack)?

I find purposely inflicting TPKs boring.

I think with a lot of Doom, one should make the encounters more challenging.
Spend a Doom every now and then to take action before the players. Spend a few Dooms to roll a few more D20’s.
Use the environment.
But to go all in for max damage and a TPK is a little extreme.

However to teach the players to be more careful with adding Doom is a good thing.

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The spirit of this game is pulp action, which means more exciting encounters and not survival-based game where every roll can lead to tragic death. Killing the group is… lame, stupid and only OK if you are playing OSR style of games such as Dungeon Crawl Classic, AD&D, Forbidden Lands and all are on the same page. In Conan, you should make memorable games where the characters managed to shine and overcome the obstacles against all odds, not to make it deadly where every bad roll is punished.

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Plus youd probably have a lot of desertion from the game, no one likes to not have fun.

It’s worked out well for my groups so far. Usually a lot of doom means the characters are down a couple wounds or traumas by the time I run out. Sacrificing armor and good use of spending fortune points have kept them from death as it should do.

Oh, the sacrificing armor mechanic made my group big scavengers during combat intense scenes. :slight_smile:

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I have spent doom to inflict massive damage and my game CAN be deadly for the PCs. That being said while characters have died that is never my goal as a GM. I try to make sure everyone is having fun. Maintaining a certain level of deadliness helps with the tension and excitement of the game. So I guess I can best say it this way: PCs in my game have died. But it has never been and will never be because I spent and overwhelming amount of Doom all in one go to ensure they do. That makes the game an GM vs Players thing and (in my opinion) defeats the purpose of the cooperative storytelling entirely.

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