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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5107906" data-attributes="member: 54846">Not only are you dealing with dice rolls, which are random chance (rather than intentional narrative), but there's a very important bit of information:Some conventions of Fiction do not work in RPGs.Instead of people telling stories about just some characters, players are pretending to be those characters. This has a fairly significant effect: Players don't like to lose. When anyone here asks for advice along the lines of "Hey, I have this idea for an encounter/story arc, but it REQUIRES the PCs to fail/get captured/whatnot", the advice falls into two categories: 1) Do not do it, period, or 2) Do it, but exercise the utmost caution.In fiction, by the end of the second act, the protagonists have been really down and out. The whole story can be seeming to dump on them, they can be beaten up, have their mom shot, whatnot. Things are rough SO that when they pull themselves out of it, it's a triumph. But your average player would think the DM is being an abusive jerk if he lost all that stuff, all this horrible stuff was just HEAPED on his character just so "I can triumph in the end". They want to be awesome the whole way through (or at least past the beginning after they made it through the first 2 levels of suck). A story where the protagonist just can't win and is forced into a situation/certain path can be interesting and entertaining, but when you're playing the character, being railroaded is rarely enjoyable, and a game where "Everyone and everything is out to get you" is often labeled as "DM vs. Player" mentality.A few weeks ago there was a thread about "Plot Characters"; in stories like Superman or Star Trek, you can have a character who is there PURELY to give noogies/abuse to the main character, and this character is IMMUNE to everything. HE's just a major annoyance to be suffered through. Seeing this is fun for the Audience, who are seeing the wind being taken out of the sails of the character. But in an RPG, the player is playing that character, he's not viewing from the outside in, but the inside out, and so it's him who's getting humiliated for the amusement of... the DM? This is an exampe of a situation that works in fiction, but not in an RPG.The salient point being that while folks may come to an RPG to "weave a collaborative story", the #1 priority is to "Have fun". And some things that are fictional conventions do not translate into "fun" for people who are pretending to be the protagonist.What does this have to do with the OP?Characters in an RPG are "lucky" because the deck is stacked (at least underneath it all) in their favor. When they fail, SOMETHING WENT WRONG. The DM miscalculated, the dice were just not there, they made bad choices in the heat of battle, or something, but typically FAILURE IS THE EXCEPTION, not the rule, and it almost always is NOT planned for (as opposed to in a work of fiction, by the authors). Players are "lucky" because things are balanced, and they are typically expected to win, not fail. Risk is there, but it's the difference between the risk of hurting yourself while rollerskating versus skating on thin ice.The dirty secret of DMing is that the DM is supposed to let the players win, without the players knowing that he's letting them win. In Fiction, the protagonist is going to beat the guys out of his league because the author decided that was going to happen and makes it so. In RPGs, the dice have to make it so. Because the DM can't make the dice do what he wants, he normally doesn't risk it because it is due to random chance, and badguys much tougher than the PCs have the deck stacked in their favor. (DISCLAIMER: I am well aware I'm making generalizing statements. I'm sure there are players/Dms out there who like their PCs abused, want to fail, etc etc. But I believe that is the exception. There are many gaming philosophies, and the "My character getting abused and going through great amounts of suffering" is pretty far removed from what I think mostly goes on here, or at your average gaming table. The same with the DM "letting the PCs win without letting them know it"; I'm sure there are 'they win, they lose, whatever' DMs and other opinions, but again, my belief that's not the average.)</blockquote>

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