Done right, that scene could be fun in an RPG — but not an RPG intended to model the things that make the movie fun, which don’t include Indy’s random, pointless death.

If I remember correctly, the game didn’t have any “hero points” or similar mechanic to just skip the die roll, or add a big bonus to it, or anything.

Certainly would have made a difference to Dr. Jones…

Arref posted on Shadows of Greatness, a link to this article on emulating television genres. It’s a great read for anyone who plans to attempt this and highlights a lot of the problems and solutions I’ve had to deal with…

And Then James Bond Spends a Month in the Hospital – Treasure Tables Nice points about movie tropes versus rpg tropes….

Gaining DP’s can happen in a few ways — White Hats helping Heros through tough times (RP drama), good quotes, bad things happening to good people… I think I’m forgetting one, but the books aren’t easily to hand right now.

There are a bunch of unofficial uses that folks have created, with names like “Do or Die” (if you’ve watched the series, think Buffy’s duel with Angel in 2.22 Becoming, Part 2) or “Back to the Wall”.

Christian — there’s a rather funny thread at the 20 by 20 room written by Jim Henley under the title “Captain Princess and Edzilla”, that uses the author’s children to discuss exactly that point.

Christian: You’re preaching to the choir — I agree completely.

I’ve talked about this with people before, and a lot of players have preconceived notions about how RPGs “should” be played. For many of them (my current group included), if you take player death out of the equation, you take out the excitement of the possibility of losing. In order to avoid jargon and possible GNS disputes, I like to compare it to sports v. stories (and that should show that I don’t think one is superior to the other; they’re in different fields altogether). If you play RPGs like a sport, you want the win/lose option. If you want to play it in a story creating way (it doesn’t have to emulate any particular source, it could just be the goal of play to create a compelling story), then you don’t think in win/lose terms.

The disconnect in the world of RPGs out there is twofold: a) Very few systems actually mechanically support story play, even if the flavor texts say they do (see WoD); and b) players often don’t communicate well about what style of game they’re going to play with each other.

- Christian

1) Heroic Feat = +10 (to a basic roll of 1d10) on a given action
2) I Think I’m OK = halve damage taken thus far
3) Plot Twist = spend to enact a change to the background/situation
4) Righteous Fury = +5 hit and damage for the rest of the fight if sufficiently motivated
5) Back From the Dead = what it sounds like, and it costs more DPs the quicker you want to come back (the highest being 10 DPs to come back immediately)

An important thing is that there are fairly deep pockets to these. Normal “Scooby” characters start out with 20 Drama Points, while hero (i.e. Slayer/vampire/etc.) characters start out with 10 DPs. However, they are not gained at a very fast rate (average 1-2 per episode, maybe).

So as you’re going through an episode, you’ll almost certainly be able to survive and win in some sense. However, it might drain you of a lot of drama points. The more that you use for defensive purposes, the less you have to accomplish heroic things. They’re fairly well designed — the system has no death spiral, and saving yourself from damage works better the *more* damage you’ve taken. So DPs work well as a last resort — as opposed to systems like Shadowrun (1st ed) where it encourages spending early.

(There’s more to be said about Drama Points, but I don’t have the time right now.)