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A few months ago, my home D&D group was playing through one of the Limitless Champions adventures, and while the number of PCs was less than recommended, with Lanark the minotaur barbarian fighting with them, they should’ve had no problem. Except the dice favored the villains, one roll after another on both sides, culminating with rolling a 1 on a second PC Death Save.
I felt terrible, As much as we joke about adversarial DMing at our table, my players know I love them. I was devastated, probably more than the player whose character of four years had died.
But her character's story hadn’t yet been told. There are a lot of loose ends to that character’s story that we haven’t tied up, and I didn’t want that unsatisfying ending. So a dream sequence and a deal with that warlock’s mystery patron later, the corpse on the back of the cart sat up, brushed himself off, and finished the adventure. And now we have one more loose end to tie up.
Whether in an RPG or daily life, the dice don’t always roll in our favor. No matter how much we try to control our story (or even think we can control it), outcomes are uncertain. And when we plan for every contingency and follow all the expert advice, and it blows up in a way we could never expect, we can be left feeling the weight of failure.
But one of my catchphrases is, “Don’t apologize for something you can’t control,” whether your circumstances, your health, the actions of someone else, or any of the infinite other factors that influence your life or the lives of those around you. (I used to think I had the most stable job in the world…until I didn’t.) We can control our decisions but not the roll of the dice. So when something fails, that doesn’t mean you failed. You can try to learn from it to give yourself advantage on the roll next time, but the roll remains. If the outcome goes according to plan, celebrate. If not, the outcome does not diminish your value.
That’s why we have dice jail.
(And if you don't have your own dice jail, I made a free STL for you to print your own!) |
