See, my problem.is that I don't see the conflict and struggle of most RPGs in terms of a sport, so I don't feel the need to force said conflicts to be "sporting". The obstacles are what they are, and the PCs have what they have to overcome them, including the judgement of their players at the helm. If that means they roll over the opposition, so be it. If that means they make an error and get themselves slaughtered (or nearly so), so be it.
I was using the sport analogy because that was what Lanefan used. It applies just as much to narrative challenge, hence my references to things like growth and changing who and what yoy are, which is mostly irrelevant to sporting.
And yes,
sometimes just rolling over a challenge is great! Sometimes fleeing to fight another day is great!
But
terminating the story is not great. It's actually really boring. Hence, don't make that one of the available failure states. Let there be real failure! Without it, the story is dull. But don't use "and thus nothing else happened forever" as a failure state, because
then the story is dull too.
It's why "save the world" plots are so boring, unless used as vehicles for other, more interesting developments. Because no story actually worth reading will
let that failure happen. Just deleting the world entirely is a narrative dead-end and deeply unsatisfying. But if we
know the world will be saved, then dangling "the world is in danger!!1!one!" in the audience's face is pointless. Which means you must either move the excitement and uncertainty to secondary plotlines (e.g. romance subplots, "No,
I am your father," training montage, etc.), or you must make the core plot require resolving some dilemma (trilemma, etc.) which seems to have no answer, and yet we as an audience know it
must have one because the world is going to get saved in the end.
Random, irrevocable permadeath is fine, if you're cool with completely unsatisfying endings in 90% of cases. I'm not. I'm here for a cool story that even I as GM don't know where it will go or how it will end. (I may know some bits before the others do, but I don't know what those bits will
mean until they do too.) So I don't make dull, pointless consequences—or "nonsequences," if you'll grant me the terrible wordplay. Only roll the dice if consequences for
both success AND failure are interesting. Random, irrevocable permadeath is usually not an interesting consequence. Thus, I won't generally roll for it.
But that doesn't mean death isn't an option. It just means:
It won't be irrevocable (you can be raised, but what terrible cost might be paid to do so? What dark alliance might have to be made to secure your revival?),
or
It won't be permanent (you'll come back...but what will your allies suffer in your absence? What goals might fail because your critical aid was missing?),
or
It won't be random (either you as player accept the death and choose to roll with that as an interesting consequence along the way, or you decide this is a good stopping point for your participation in the game and thus stop playing.)
All of these are simply more interesting than "you failed to avoid being gutted by the kobold. You are now dead, and nothing you cared about matters to anyone else now. Roll up a new character. Hopefully this one lasts longer."
