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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7649657" data-attributes="member: 87792">Death, where is thy sting?In my experience on both sides of the screen a PC dying is the least effective kind of loss - and if anything the player that is most affected by it is the DM. The player just shrugs and rolls up a new character (and probably had half a dozen ideas they wanted to play anyway). Loss as in failure in an adventure with consequences is far more lasting, more compelling, and gives much more opportunity for redemption, for immersion, and for storytelling. Indeed the least meaningful losses in RPGs come in Paranoia precisely because death is so expected.Indeed I'd go so far as to say that one of the features of a more gamelike game is that there is less of a penalty from loss because the stakes aren't so high. This ties in to the fiero/satisfaction divide you mentioned last time. Under fiero losing is an expected part of the game - and you fall so you can pick yourself up again. Satisfaction requires that a loss be driven in to the hilt so that the story completes itself nicely.  A meaningless loss (or a meaningless win) is against the spirit of satisfaction - whereas the win or loss of fiero.The exception, of course, comes when you are using somewhat old school assumptions and a new PC is going to start at first level and it's going to be months of play before they can contribute much more than as a porter or baggage handler most of the time.  This, however, leads to a turtly style of play where loss and especially death is probably less likely than it is in 4e.My comment was based on the fact that just about every comment I see from you about 4e is negative; I don't think I've seen a single positive one from you (and have on occasion found that what you are criticising is local play practices that disagree with the actual rules).  4e changed a lot (especially from 3.X - a lot of the philosophical changes are reversions to older modes of D&D) for both good and ill.  And from you the impression I get is that you wish you were playing a different game.  What you have to say about it is normally interesting, but as I say I don't think I've seen a single positive comment from you on the subject of 4e and it's been three "Here's what 4e changed - I don't like it" columns in a row.</blockquote>

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