So there they were, deep in the darkest times.  The dragon horde was raiding the kingdom while the demon army amassed within the Drakkor Mountains.  The heroes knew they weren’t up to the task, or where they?

Many DMs love dark tones to their games, and many players do as well.  Personally, I think there’s something to love about having to battle seemingly unsurmountable odds because there’s no choice.  However, I’ve also played with DMs who don’t seem to get one very important factor:  Players have to be able to believe they can win, even if their characters don’t.

Liambic and I, in fact, have played for one in particular who’s really bad about this.  What’s worse, this DM likes to have the PCs be the cause of all the death and distruction that’s coming.  Sure enough, we would go into ruins on an errand for someone powerful.  While there, we would do something normal (open a non-descript door or something else), then POOF!  All powerful nastiness is released into the world, and we had to fix the problem.

Now, this storyline isn’t completely bad.  It sucked that all the campaigns were basically the same thing, but it’s not completely sucky in and of itself.  Dark tones add something to a role playing game that a happy-go-lucky tone just can’t.  It brings urgency to the game, and urgency is very important in building suspense.  I think we all understand how important suspence is to a game.  In fact, a lot of DMs love to add suspence to games, and plenty use dark tones to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, a lot of DMs forget about hope being there.  Players have to understand that there is a chance their characters will survive the climatic battle to come.  It’s their call as to whether the characters understand it, but that’s irrelevant.  Some poignant role play moments can come from characters who think they’re about to die, so leave that one alone.  It’s the players that’s important.

Here are a few thoughts that popped into my head that may help you give hope to the players, and thereby salvage their fun:

  • Reveal an ancient prophecy where a group will battle a menace that meets the description of what they’re going up against.
  • Give them a quest for a magical item that may help them.
  • Have priests and kings alike exclaim that the heroes are the best hope the world has (this one has the side bonus of also adding a little pressure to the heroes).

Now, there’s no reason they have to win, so that’s always up to the DM.  Keeping it up to chance is all find and good, and if characters die, they die.  But without the hope of winning, the fun quickly goes out of a campaign.  Trust me on this one…I know.