IC: Truly deadly dungeon with rp
>1; Introduce new characters. The story is a situation and therefore while someone needs to handle it, it doesn't need to be the same characters from beginning to end. Also, hirelings help by providing a pool of additional warm bodies if the players bring them along.
>2: I follow Alexandrian's route on this, prep situations not plots. The situation is not aimed at specific characters, thus reinforcements can be fit into things just fine.
>3: Going all out "old school" on this, means wandering monsters and perhaps monster groups actively hunting them will mean that sitting around is dangerous. Also, limited supplies will be a thing as well. The group will be facing danger anyway. Caution and patience are to be expected and will be just fine, but inaction provides no escape from danger.
>4: I find this an odd statement. Dumb characters can be entertaining, but it makes sense that they are smart enough to survive or at least to listen to teammates who can keep them alive, and if not, their death can still entertaining and spur other characters onward. Personally, I'll just see how the players handle it and respond if need to.
To me, the only time tactics and roleplay are at odds is when players try to play the rules and the rules have weak or no connection to the in-game world. For example, having minions that you treat differently from otherwise identical enemies because the rules handles them differently. Another example is players who will not think to flip a table over for cover because there are no rules for flipping over tables.
Get everyone on the right page of playing the game, not playing the rules. Everything else can be worried about as it comes.
>5: I find such things as metagaming occurs in only two cases, the first is like above when players are playing the rules instead of the game, the second is when players have knowledge their characters don't and can't keep that knowledge separate.
The latter is easily handled by playing an original story/sandbox and playing in a setting where the standard expectations are false often enough to make players question their own knowledge.
On second thought, there is a third way in which this becomes a problem that is easily remedied, and that when the gm doesn't make secret checks on behalf of the players. This leads to cases where the players know they rolled low and must have missed something. This is avoided in two ways by any decent gm, first, if failure of the check results in failure obvious to the player but not the character, then make that check secretly and without the players knowing that you made it. Second, you can also combine the check with another similar check the player does know about (such as needing a perception check to notice a hidden enemy while they are searching for a secret door. Have them roll for the search and take the result for whether they notice the enemy as well), or make the check standard such as a perception check whenever they enter room whether there is need or not.
=== ALSO ADDED SOME SETTING AND GAME DETAILS TO OP POST
This message was last edited by the user at 03:15, Tue 02 Apr 2019.