In Alio’s rant yesterday about Dante’s Inferno, he brought up the ever-interesting computer RPG topic of save points. If you’re as old as me, you may have computer game memories where the party gets slaughtered, having to restart at the last save point, and then slogging through the same four hours of dungeon to get back to where you were. And of course, there were times when I would turn my TV and leave the Nintendo running for days or hours at a time because I had to leave and hadn’t reached a save spot yet. Good times! But, save points weren’t all bad. They required smart use of resources, knowing when to run away from battles to increase your chance of survival until the next point, and then there’s huge rush of relief when you finally get there. In some games the location of save point would indicate the nearness of a particularly tough level or boss fight.
In tabletop RPGs, as in life, we don’t have save points. This may be because the logistics are difficult, it’s not particularly realistic, or we want players to make smart, life-affirming decisions. However those arguments don’t really convince me. I’d love to hear some more arguments against save points, if you’ve got one. In my mind, if a game allows resurrection, why can’t save points be possible too? I’ve put together some starting point ideas for adding save points to a game.
Literal Save Points
There are places in the physical world where the Plane of Souls bleeds through, such that the line between life and death is blurred. Through the use of a ritual, the players can bind their souls to these spots, so if they should all die an untimely death, they would reappear exactly as they were at the time of the ritual. Such a ritual would require that the deaths be unnatural (not old age or disease) or specifically death through violent actions (i.e. combat), and require that everyone bound in the ritual die within a short time period of each other (e.g. same encounter or session). To prevent old people from killing themselves and coming back in their 20s, this magic should be time bound, i.e. the save action dissipates after only a few hours or days.
These spots can manifest themselves in a particular way, indicated by the growth of a special kind of crystal or plant, or manifest in some sparkly area effect or magical trace. Alternatively they can be invisible to the naked eye and therefore findable only through skill checks, rituals, or magic items. A GM can fine tune how much of an issue they are in his game by adjusting their frequency, ritual cost, or how long the ritual lasts. If the characters come back without any memories, this can pose a fun role-playing challenge to the players, but I wouldn’t want to get into a situation where the players were forced to repeat the same actions over and over.
Logistical Save Points
Instead of an in-game save point, the players can be given some sort of chit they can cash in anytime or at certain times to set a “save point.” This chit can be given out once per adventure, session, encounter, etc. or awarded for good role-playing, completing quests, or killing a main villain, etc, or however else you would want to reward the players. Then when there’s a TPK, you restart at the point when they redeemed the save point chit.
Savish Points
Save points imply a global reset of the world back to the time of the save, but there are many aspects about save points that can be considered and used individually. For instance, the party can be returned to the time and place of the save but with their memories intact. Instead, they can return to the same state they were in at save-time but come back instantaneously to the present, so the events that lead up to and including their deaths has happened in their current reality.
Mechanically the GM can allow the party to save not their lives but some expendable resource like gold, ammo, items, etc. This in essence lets them retry just a small scenario. This would encourage the players to take bigger risks as the penalties would be fewer. This can be good for play testing a scenario or whenever you’d want the run the party through the same encounter multiple times.
Dealing With Use and Abuse
I have yet to try this idea out with my group, so I am not sure how to go about actually implementing the save. Thanks to the Character Builder, it’s pretty easy to keep a character sheet up to date and print out a second copy at the save time. Alternatively, you could photocopy the sheets, if you have a copier handy. If not, just using a pencil and keeping track of what has changed after the save should be sufficient.
What’s harder to implement is ignoring what the players have learned since their character’s deaths. Do you have your characters walk blindly into the same traps? I’d recommend to the GM to make slight changes to the dungeons and encounters for the second time to keep things fresh. Small changes can be explained as an alternate but similar reality or just entropy. If you’re allowing save points into you’re game you’re already agreeing to give the players a second chance, so it should be okay for them to take reasonable precautions or make some meta-game assumptions for their second trip through their adventure.
To prevent abuse, I’d recommend making Saving something that is rare and that they would have to give up something for (treasure, certainty on plot points, or “good player” points). Also I would think that they should be able to only save once per opportunity. If they snuff it twice in the same encounter, they got what the deserved.
Happy New Year!
I kinda like the idea of a “Re do” save point. Maybe if you use it that when they return they loose something like a point in Con or even some skill points. this way they may not want to reset to many times.
I’m not sure I’d implement this in my own game, but it’s a cool idea for the players. We all know how much players despise losing their PC’s life. I just don’t think I’d want to run through the same encounters twice, and I don’t think any but the best role-players would be able to stop themselves from meta-gaming when they repeated the scenarios.
Just for the record; I wanted to clarify that my issue on a tabletop wasn’t save points, per se. It was more the parallel of less control of the game for the players. The lack of control for me in the video game is what woke me to the behavior I display in the game.
Also, yeah, I remember leaving games on all day because my mother interrupted me while I was midway between save points to run some errand or another!