From a player's perspective:

Always try to scout things out first so you don't walk into an ambush.

Pick your fights, don't wade into fights you can't win.  Don't think you're an action hero, you're the guy who dies in the battle so avoid the battle.

Use stealth and guile as much as possible.  Try talking your way out.

Have a sniper in position just in case.

If you have to shoot, shoot first.

Remember that legless zombies can only chase you very slowly.

Position your guys out of the claymore's blast radius.

While fleeing enemies may come back they are way lower priority targets than the ones still shooting at you.

As a GM

Give the players a break, the cannon fodder shouldn't be stacked, customized killing machines unless the players want to go hardcore wargaming in which case knock yourself out.

Remember, if they don't have fun, they won't come back or want to play your favorite detailed and realistic system ever again.

Don't punish their mistakes too much.  Maybe a squad of reinforements arrives instead of a batalion with AFVs and air support even though the latter would be realistic given how long they stood around dithering and arguing about what to do next.

I'll probably think of more but for players it boils down to don't be stupid and for GMs it's expect them to be stupid and be a bit lenient.  After all, it's just a game.

Lastly, if it's gonna be a TPK, make sure it's an EPIC TPK that they'll be talking about for years to come.

Another point.  Deadly is okay.  Randomly deadly with nothing you as a PC can do about it is not fun.  One shot kills without warning by a sniper are realistic and are fun if you're the one dealing out the mayhem.  Not so much if the sniper is an NPC enemy.  I like having snipers but especially since my current project is aimed for young, beginning players I also put in a lot of ways to avoid surprise instakills.  There's always a passive perception check to spot the sniper, if nobody invested in that skill that's on the party.  There's simply paying attention, that will give an active perception check.  There's magic to detect hostile intent.  There's quite a few spells that let you spot possible attackers.  There's stealth so the enemy can't see you.  There's armor, protective magic, and investing in the defense trait.  After all that, mechanically you can be disabled but not killed by a single attack.  A follow up attack on a disabled character will kill him, but your friends have a chance to protect you first.  (And btw a disabled character is out of action until after he is healed _and_ gets a full night rest.  Disabled is bad)  After all that if a player still manages to get his character killed he really should feel that it was a failure on his part, not rng or a mean gm.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 19, 2025, 06:54:55 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 19, 2025, 11:10:52 AMCounterpoint: If you start a new job and see Bob brutally killed right next to you while on day one of the job, you will likely never forget Bob.

Not if that's the job. Soldiers didn't remember all the people they met at Stalingrad.

Your experience differs from mine. I've worked alongside US Army soldiers. While they were never in Stalingrad, most were in UEF and UIF. They didn't tend to forget those they lost.

I used to play and own Rolemaster. The game had extensive and a high investment time to build a character. And it just took a dice roll in combat for a character to die. Which meant, just literal seconds and all the work put into making a character seemingly wasted with a quick death.

Some people call this a feature of the game. Others find it a source of frustration.

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 20, 2025, 02:07:38 AM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 19, 2025, 06:54:55 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 19, 2025, 11:10:52 AMCounterpoint: If you start a new job and see Bob brutally killed right next to you while on day one of the job, you will likely never forget Bob.

Not if that's the job. Soldiers didn't remember all the people they met at Stalingrad.

Your experience differs from mine. I've worked alongside US Army soldiers. While they were never in Stalingrad, most were in UEF and UIF. They didn't tend to forget those they lost.

I wish you were wrong, but I'm going to have to agree here. One of my friends served over in Iraq until he was disabled. He remembers them all by name.

Trauma tends to cement rather than dilute memory. That guy who exploded next to you on your first day (who would have been you if the flight path was a fraction different) is not something you forget.

They don't talk about it (much), but they don't forget.

Honestly, building something about that into a Funnel system might be a viable mechanic if the campaign start is always going to be some horror show where 75% of those participating are going to be slaughtered.

Maybe some sort of "hardness" score based on how many were lost achieving the objective. Bonuses to actions related to determination and duty and group cohesion, penalties to actions involving showing genuine emotion to outsiders or "pointless" tasks.

Make the experience of the Funnel mean something other than just weeding out the weak for the strongest survivors.

I'll be honest, the Funnel system of chargen sounds horrific to me as a regular part of launching a campaign. It basically creates just a single type of PC (action survivors). Sometimes you wanna be more than just "the guy who didn't die in the massacre."

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 20, 2025, 08:54:52 AMI'll be honest, the Funnel system of chargen sounds horrific to me as a regular part of launching a campaign. It basically creates just a single type of PC (action survivors). Sometimes you wanna be more than just "the guy who didn't die in the massacre."

I did the DCC funnel thing once.  I wasn't at all upset when my level 0 halfling moneylender bought the farm.  Partly it was because he took me maybe 2 minutes to roll up.  Partly it was because I expected him to die.  I also didn't care when he died.  He wasn't an rpg character.  He was more like a disposable piece in a skirmish minis game.  He's dead.  Whatever.  Dock worker guy will attack with his stick. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 20, 2025, 09:21:03 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 20, 2025, 08:54:52 AMI'll be honest, the Funnel system of chargen sounds horrific to me as a regular part of launching a campaign. It basically creates just a single type of PC (action survivors). Sometimes you wanna be more than just "the guy who didn't die in the massacre."

I did the DCC funnel thing once.  I wasn't at all upset when my level 0 halfling moneylender bought the farm.  Partly it was because he took me maybe 2 minutes to roll up.  Partly it was because I expected him to die.  I also didn't care when he died.  He wasn't an rpg character.  He was more like a disposable piece in a skirmish minis game.  He's dead.  Whatever.  Dock worker guy will attack with his stick. 

I'm more referring to how "one note" the funnel system becomes in terms of campaign setup. If every campaign starts with some massacre that kills 75% of all involved I'd quickly find that rather same-y and limited.

No youngest son knights seeking names for themselves, no bookish wizards facing the real world for the first time, no annointed priests on a "mission from God."

Just commoners who turn into Action Survivors. Again. And Again.

I've nothing against it as a one-off; but I'd find it extremely tiresome if it that was the only way a campaign could ever begin.

The funnel system or its equivalent in another game is not my preferred way to start, either.  However, I can see it as a way to shock a group of players not used to that style into that mindset. I've found over the years running for players in a new campaign that:

- Experienced players of about my age will just roll with it.

- Inexperienced players of about my age often don't believe that a character will die until they see it.

- Players new to my campaigns but experienced with other GMs often don't believe that I will let a character die until they see it.

- Novices are all over the place.  They'll take the possibility of character death at face value but then follow along with the rest.

Underlying all of this is that about two-thirds of players are bad at statistics.  If they have really bad luck with a good plan, they'll think the plan was bad.  If they have really good luck with a bad plan, they'll think the plan was good.  So there has to be enough action that goes right up to the edge fairly early to give them a good sample size to make sure they can learn the difference between plans and luck.

So I tell them that one of the reasons the game is somewhat deadly (but not funnel-style slaughter deadly) is so that they can lose some characters early and learn where the boundaries are, before they have too much time invested in the characters.  Then I find that even though the game is still somewhat deadly for more powerful characters, they've learned that I'm serious--I don't kill characters but I do let characters die when bad planning or bad luck or both happen. Moreover, the way I run tends to favor selective aggression.  So there is the opposite lesson for the overly cautious, that if you do decide to go in, go in all out.  Players that have learned how the thing really works can still lose an experienced character, but it doesn't happen often.

For every thing there is a season; a time to run and a time to fight; a time to surrender and a time to fight the odds; a time to talk and a time to ignore the sly words.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 18, 2025, 10:49:59 PMCompare that to say, something like Pathfinder 2E which at level 1 has characters start with what is even double the HP of a level 1 5th edition character. Despite this, Pathfinder 2e has a reputation as being a harsh game.

I haven't heard that about PF2 at all.  It seems that all the fans of the system (which I have looked at but personally never tried so I'm literally going off of that online reputation pretty much exclusively) is that the math is "tight" and the game is balanced on a razor's edge throughout the levels.   The same thing, to a lesser extent, was parroted about Starfinder 1e (which I did play for 8 levels) and I found it both discouraging at low levels and boring at times.  But harsh?  Definitely not for Starfinder (which is admittedly just pf1.5e) and I haven't heard that said about pf2e over the years on multiple forums.  YMMV.

Having a long, detailed character creation process, means it sucks to lose that character quickly.

Quote from: Man at Arms on January 20, 2025, 02:18:04 PMHaving a long, detailed character creation process, means it sucks to lose that character quickly.

A big difference is the nature of deadliness in the system. To split it into an arbitrary binary:

1) The character is very easily killed when first introduced, but after a bit of experience becomes tough and has more options to survive. This is a design feature of D&D along with DCC and others.

2) A character might be killed at any point from some combination of bad luck or bad choices. Examples could be Rolemaster - where at any time a rare critical hit could instakill a character, or also Call of Cthulhu where even an experienced investigator can still easily be killed by a monster or shotgun. In this case, a character isn't especially likely to be killed on their first session, but they may run out of luck sooner or later.

If a character's death is particularly likely in the first session, then chargen time may seem like a waste. However, if my character dies after nine sessions, then it doesn't matter that much whether I took 15 minutes or 90 minutes to make my character months ago.

Quote from: jhkim on January 20, 2025, 07:35:37 PMIf a character's death is particularly likely in the first session, then chargen time may seem like a waste. However, if my character dies after nine sessions, then it doesn't matter that much whether I took 15 minutes or 90 minutes to make my character months ago.

Do you even play RPGs, or is this all theorycrafting?  Because no one cares about the time it took to make a character months ago.  They care about the time it takes to make a character while the rest of your group is adventuring without you.  They care about the months of character-building and shared adventure that are now moot.  If you have a run of bad luck playing Rolemaster, you can spend 90% of your time in a session rolling up characters.  My group has funny stories about this happening to us.  Coincidentally, we don't play Rolemaster anymore...

To be fair to my Rolemaster GM of those years ago. He would stop the game entirely while he adjudicated a new character being created. Because of how involved the process was of making characters for that game.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 21, 2025, 06:43:05 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 20, 2025, 07:35:37 PMIf a character's death is particularly likely in the first session, then chargen time may seem like a waste. However, if my character dies after nine sessions, then it doesn't matter that much whether I took 15 minutes or 90 minutes to make my character months ago.

Do you even play RPGs, or is this all theorycrafting?  Because no one cares about the time it took to make a character months ago.  They care about the time it takes to make a character while the rest of your group is adventuring without you.  They care about the months of character-building and shared adventure that are now moot.  If you have a run of bad luck playing Rolemaster, you can spend 90% of your time in a session rolling up characters.  My group has funny stories about this happening to us.  Coincidentally, we don't play Rolemaster anymore...

To be fair, outside of D&D in my youth (like when I was 10-12 at Boy Scout camp), I've never seen replacement PCs rolled up during a game session.

If you suffer an unreversed death you're consistently out until next session (since the GM has to also determine how the new PC joins the campaign).

Therefore in nearly every situation I have ever experienced, whether the new PC takes 15 minutes or 45 minutes is largely irrelevant... the loss in play time and connections are the same regardless.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley on January 21, 2025, 07:47:11 AMTo be fair to my Rolemaster GM of those years ago. He would stop the game entirely while he adjudicated a new character being created. Because of how involved the process was of making characters for that game.

Well that's one way to ensure the group does everthing they can to keep every PC alive and a great incentive to boot anyone that has trouble keeping their PCs alive.