 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie, and I am an addict. The truth is, I love killing my players. I love seeing them freak out and wonder if they're gonna escape, only for that last second of realization to hit them at the final moment before there's nothing left. It brings great thrill to me, but it's also very illegal, so that's why I also like killing their characters as a proxy. However, that has earned me the title of Deadly DM, a moniker that I once held in high regard as a sign that I was firm but fairly cruel. But now, when I look back at some of the decisions I've made, I think to myself, did I really need to chop that man in half with a sliding door? And that brings me to today's topic, Deadly DMs. As always, keep in mind that the majority of this is just my opinion, so if you specifically choose to play a reborn because you understand that what is dead may never die, then feel free to play your games however you want. And real quick, I'd like to give a brief shoutout to my new patrons this month. Jay Bush! Calvin Bowles! Jay McQuess! Dust! Lumilas! Josh Langford! Thank you all so much for pledging to my Patreon. It is only due to the continued power of your pledges that I am able to write my electronic purchases off as a tax deduction. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So the term Deadly DM is pretty easy to follow. It means a dungeon master, lorekeeper, or storyteller who went to the George R.R. Martin School of Character Development in that they believe that the existence of HP is a challenge for them to overcome, much like how players are doing the same for monsters in the dungeon. On its face, this is a valid way to play. 5E is a combat sim with exploration and talking takedowns so it makes sense that you could die when 50% of your game consists of turning goblins into meat patties, but that's not exactly where the Deadly DM stops. DDMs, as I've decided to call them because Deadly DM is kind of a clunky term to say, but I'm only gonna say it this once and ever again, feel that life is not worth living without the constant reminder of death to set the stakes, and therefore, the Deadly DM will aim to kill an important character, either an NPC or one controlled by the player, every few sessions as a constant reminder that bounty hunting is a complicated profession. In this way, the game becomes more realistic, the threats become more threatening, and the players know that when they work together to pull themselves out of a cave infested with owl bears, it was the power of friendship that saved their lives and not a Deus Ex DM. This becomes all the more prevalent past 5th level where druids and clerics start to get spells that can pull your soul kicking and screaming from its afterlife and stuff it back into your body. At this point, to keep up the stakes, death becomes even more common, because it's not as worrisome anymore, and it's around this point that players start to see the benefit of playing under a DM who puts the same value in human life as Congress. So, if all is well and good, why bother talking about Deadly DMs at all? What possible stigma could there be outside of whiny babies who expected the plot to fold around them like a suit of armor, only to find their HP knocked down to zero when they're curiously handed a new character sheet? Well, the problem manifests when a dungeon master takes the idea that there could be character death and manipulates things so that there IS character death. Let me be frank, there are plenty of games where bringing a binder of expendable bards is perfectly acceptable. I run Curse of Strahd that way, but I tell my players at the beginning, hey, you're probably gonna die in horrible and unfair ways, and the joy of the game isn't wondering if someone will die, it's figuring out how to specifically make it not you. I also tell my players, hey, if you don't wanna play this like a slasher flick, I can just pull back on the stabbing. I've even had a DM that was like, yo, I'll give you three Deus Ex Machinas across the campaign to use on your characters if you really don't want one of them to die yet. But the point is that I tell my players ahead of time so that their 8-page backstory isn't wasted on an 8-minute character. The information is getting across that traditional D&D is getting swapped out for dungeons and Dark Souls. Because of that, I don't get a reputation that I am a Deadly DM just that I can be. And that's a major difference because while some people look at the term Deadly DM and think they can handle it, other players are warded off about the idea or find out about the reputation too late and then have a bad time. When someone is labeled a Deadly DM, it's most often used as a warning that this DM doesn't know when to turn off the murder. Not everybody plays My Curse of Strahd games and like I said, even I opt to tone it down for people who just want the story because different groups like different things. Some people, however, are sociopaths who think that more character death equals more good. And so they lose their minds trying to create a scenario where one player's character gets viciously killed because wouldn't that be so cool? I'm guilty of this too. When I was a baby DM, I'd gone my first year without ever losing a character to the wild. But for some reason, being seen as a DM who wasn't willing to make the hard choice was bad and peer pressure was weighing on me to finally develop my own signature. So during one game of Star Wars Saga Edition, I had the enemy ships blow up the side of the player's cruiser. And while they were scrambling to fight back, one character opened a door to a room that had been recently renovated by laser fire, sucking them into deep space. Another player grabbed them using the force and tried to Princess Leia them back onto the ship, but I saw this as my moment to finally be seen as the cool kid. So I described how the longer the door was open, the more the air from the cabin would get sucked out, and the unfortunate player made the judgment call to shoot the operating console, slamming the door shut and sealing their fate. It was an amazing moment, made more intense by how shocked the other players were because they didn't think I had it in me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, murder equaled good. From then on, whenever I ran a game in Star Wars, I was vicious. And so I understand the want to twist that knife because it's 2020 something and angst is the only way to speak to your audience. But it ended up crippling me as a game runner because while my players didn't dislike me, they just stopped putting the effort into making characters because they didn't know if that character would die after saying, Hi, I'm Darwin. I essentially threw away an entire portion of the community without realizing it. And even my storytelling suffered because I stopped understanding how to develop a plot without throwing a knife at a dartboard. So my choices were either to shield myself from criticism by saying that one Liam Neeson line or break the habit with that one Professor Oak line. Ultimately, I decided on the latter and now my murderous tendencies are mixed in with my gambling tendencies because 5e has a neat little system where I can stab somebody until they fall unconscious and then the other players have every opportunity to keep them from bleeding to death. Just like in real life. Still though, some deadly DMs aren't sociopaths. They're just lazy and they tend to decide that D&D is for punching down. So they set up their games with expectations for the players to follow but not the other way around. Specifically, this type of DM will advertise their game as a tough 5th level adventure or something and then no matter what party comp they get, they'll run the exact same game every time leading to TPKs when the party doesn't reach the DM's idea of what 5th level is supposed to mean or on the flip side leading to completely trivial fights against a team that built their characters to be walking fortresses. In either case, this is not a tough 5e adventure but the DM will still pat themselves on the back that some people finished it and some didn't because it meant that they must have been doing something right. But the reality is that said DM will have failed on their promise. All they did was gaslight 4 or 5 more people into thinking that strong equals good in a game where the stats are made up and the XP doesn't matter. Truth is, and I know I say this a lot, you have to balance your games or else you're leaving it to fate to decide what sort of DM you'll be known as. If my players don't have a healer, they're already in for a tough time and I may need to tone it down so that it stays a tough time and not a downright impossible one. If they all sit down with beefcakes, I need to up the challenge or else they'll get bored. It's just the nature of being the game maker that you have to work with the team you got and not the team that you came up with in your head. Sorry if that inconveniences you, but until we create elements that can project thoughts onto our players' brains, welcome to DMing. And all this doesn't mean that death can't happen in your games. Quite the opposite. I still kill my players fairly often. I even have a ritual in my gaming discord where everyone presses F to pay respects when a character dies. The reason I'm not seen in a negative light for doing that is because of what comes after. Character death does not have to mean the end. It's no secret that players get attached to their characters and they usually don't want to see them die before their story is finished. So they beseech the powers that be for guidance. This is where the fun begins. You, as the DM, are literally all the power that be. So you can come up with an infinite amount of reasons why a player character can return if that player really wants to have their character back. My favorite means of doing so is to have some otherworldly being make a deal with a dead character in return for life, be that the warlock's patron, the cleric's god, or some other creature that now wants something in return for what is to them, the trivial job of replacing immortal's batteries. My players actually once tried to bring a character back to life by stuffing them with a demon icker because they knew that it could mutate to spawn demons. And I was like, this is a horrible idea, but let's fucking go! This leaves consequences for death without completely demoralizing a player who had bad luck. Meanwhile, the other players have no idea whether or not they're going to see their friend again because the option is always available for a dead player to say, I don't want to play with you anymore and drop their character into the outer planes. And if they do get their friend back, there's no guarantee that it's going to be the same person because they don't know what mecanations went on in the cosmos that brought them back into the land of the living. Hell, Lord of the Rings did this exact same thing. Only two people in the party died and one of them came back after spending so much time in eternity that they looped back around while the other guy switched character sheets to go play a diseased gerbil. Overall, Deadly DMs usually come from a place of good intentions that got very confused by the kink of sedomascism. No one wants to make a bad game for their players, but if you find yourself labeled as a Deadly DM and you see people fleeing at the sight of you, maybe don't take that as a compliment you'd hope it is. And if the police come knocking on your door, check if they've got a warrant before you invite them in for some live-action role-playing. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, check out all my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can afford a cleanup crew for reasons. But yeah, Davy out.