The Player Massacre of 2010

Looking back over my notes and journals, I think the official name of the campaign was 'the search for the eight-fold key', but it wasn't long before it got the name by which it's been known ever since: The Player Massacre of 2010.

There are some valuable lessons to be learned from this campaign, which I'll discuss at the bottom of the post, but first, here's how it all went down...

Month 1
We started out as a party of five:

Ari the halfling sorcerer
Volrek the human summoner
Anya the human oracle
Lyzara the elf witch
Zid the elf rogue

We should have realised how things were going to go when early on we encountered an entire village of werewolves. Session 3 is where we lost Zid the rogue, killed by a really medium werewolf.

Volrek got retired at this point (the player was bored of playing cheerleader to his eidolon), and we also gained an extra player.

Month 2
We now had a party of six:

Ari the halfling sorcerer
Anya the human oracle
Lyzara the elf witch
Zordlon the human wizard
Victor the TBD (I forget his class and race due to what happened to him later.)
Tanuruk the half-orc barbarian

Session 6 saw us encounter a giant exploding poison zombie snake, which is where we lost my character, Lyzara the witch, and by extension, all the plot the GM had been planning for her.

At this point we made a new rule for the GM, who we already knew was a little too fond of stacking templates after the fiendish albino vampire winged drow in the previous campaign.  He was not allowed to use any monster with five or more words in its description.

Month 3
The current party:

Ari the halfling sorcerer
Anya the human oracle
Zordlon the human wizard
Victor the see below
Tanuruk the half-orc barbarian
Jekila the elf alchemist

In session 11, Victor ended up turning into an evil skeleton in order to save Tanuruk's life.  Technically not quite dead, but not entirely alive either.

Lyzara's replacement, Jekila, lasted exactly as long as her predecessor.  She was exploded by a rakshasa's fireball in session 12, along with Ari.

Month 4
A couple more replacements later we had:

Anya the human oracle
Zordlon the human wizard
Victor the evil skeleton
Tanuruk the half-orc barbarian
Ariadna the half-orc inquisitor
Ugruk the gnome rage prophet

Anya was acting as party brain, as the only person who actually remembered anything about what this quest was actually about.

Two sessions later, Victor died properly, after being chewed up by a giant flying worm with legs.  I should have called the GM out on that one.  That's five words.

Month 5
Only one change this time:

Anya the human oracle
Zordlon the human wizard
Tanuruk the half-orc barbarian
Ariadna the half-orc inquisitor
Ugruk the gnome rage prophet
Valreon the human summoner

Things went relatively well until I missed a session and came back to find Ugruk and Tanuruk had both died, Zordlon had been turned into a statue, and Valreon had been arrested for grave robbing.

Month 6
With Valreon's player having to quit the game the party now consisted of:

Anya the human oracle
Zordlon the human wizard (we managed to get a scroll to fix him)
Ariadna the half-orc inquisitor
Vizier Khan the human sorcerer
Utah the human monk

Right at the end of the final session, six months after we started this game, Anya was finally killed.  Thankfully, by this point we were able to bring her back.

---

The over-arching storyline of this campaign was supposed to be collecting eight magical daggers.  I have no idea why.  Trying to maintain any kind of consistent story when the characters kept being replaced with new ones with no idea what was going on just didn't work.  If you want to run a long-term plot that the PCs are advancing rather than just reacting to, they need to have some investment in it, and none of us did.

Character development was also minimal.  I had plans for Lyzara, and so did the GM, but then she was gone, and all her story with her.  I tried again with Jekila, and the same result.  My goal with Ariadna was no longer to create an interesting character with plot hooks the GM could work with, but just to create a character who could actually survive the amount of damage being thrown her way.  If you want to run plot that's personal to your PCs and allows them to develop, you need to let them live long enough for that to happen.

We did enjoy the game (we played it for six months, after all) but looking back I can't help but feel a little sad for all the stories that got suddenly cut off.

The chief lesson the GM learned from all this is that in a heroic type game like D&D or Pathfinder, not every encounter has to be challenging.  It's fine for most encounters to finish with the players victorious and not all on the brink of death.  Because unless you've actually signed up to play the Tomb of Horrors, D&D and Pathfinder aren't about the GM versus the players.  They're about telling the stories of heroes.