Kingmaker: Our first PC Death, Adrenaline Junkies & Rock, Paper, Scissors

Our Kingmaker game is blazing forth and we’ve finally had our first PC death. Our Cavalier was ripped apart by trolls. It was a sad moment and the player wasn’t that upset. He was thinking about changing characters anyway. But there’s something else that I noticed. I think we’re becoming adrenaline junkies. I think we’re subconsciously doing some things for the thrill of it.
We’re all veteran players and have been gaming for years. A couple of sessions ago, we went after a werewolf. We knew we were going after a werewolf. We hunted it down and of course the fighting began. Only one PC bothered to buy a silver a weapon. It was a tough fight but we managed to survive.
This last week, we went after some trolls. Did we stock up on fire and acid? No. Did we have a bunch of anti-troll spells handy? Nope. Were the fights brutal? Hell, yeah! Just about every character was down at least once and like I said, the cavalier died. We pushed forward through the trolls’ lair and finally faced off against the boss. We were almost out of spells and expendable items. We were down a party member. Everyone still had a little bit of damage from previous fights. When we walked into the room, we knew there was a very good chance of a TPK. IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME! Lady Luck chose to smile on us. In the first rounds of combat, we managed to crit the boss multiple times. Cheers echoed around the table when the boss dropped to the ground. It was one of those great moments that will turn into another, “No, shit. There we were . .” stories. Our complete and total lack of meta-game preparation made the session exciting and memorable.
One of the things that irks me about a lot of games and especially D&D, throughout all of its editions, is that at a certain point it becomes an elaborate game of Rock, Paper Scissors. The party is about to face off against a certain monster so they gear up with the specific abilities and tricks needed and tear through the monster with little or no problem. Yes, this is very meta-game but unfortunately the contrary is also true. If the party doesn’t outfit itself out in a certain way, the monsters will tear them apart without breaking a sweat.
So what to do? I think this boils down to the GM-Player relationship. It’s about hitting that sweet spot where the GM challenges the characters without murdering them and the players willingness to take a few lumps to make things interesting.