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Closing the Rotating Door of Death
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<blockquote data-quote="Tuft" data-source="post: 5533252" data-attributes="member: 60045"><p>I can testify to how tense and intense things can be in Starfox' campaign, and how having the luxury of caring about more than your character's survival can make things much more interesting. For example, the other night an NPC my character was interested in got lured into the embrace of what used to be her father, but now was a Zombie on a killing spree. I spent an absolutely nail-biting series of actions until I managed to get her away from the Zombie, until finally I got reinforced by my team members. After that incident, I can swear I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of my ears... </p><p></p><p>The thing is, I knew that the my odds at saving her might very well be much, much worse than my own odds at saving myself in a similar situation. Let's for argument assume that my odds at saving her were a mere 30%. I have great problems seeing a campaign with PC survival odds so low - with 2/3 of them dying every battle, you would have absolutely no continuity and overall plot. </p><p></p><p>Were my odds of saving the NPCs <em>really</em> so low? I don't know, since I don't know what the numbers were behind the DM screen. But the <em>threat</em> that they <em>might</em> have been so bad was very real to me. </p><p></p><p>To me, "characters don't die, but they can fail miserably" is more simulationistic - if you simulate books and movies, that is. How popular would Robert E. Howard have been if Conan the barbarian had died in the third chapter of the first book, only to be replaced by Ronald the Barbarian for two and a half volumes, who is substituted by Donald the Barbarian, who is...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tuft, post: 5533252, member: 60045"] I can testify to how tense and intense things can be in Starfox' campaign, and how having the luxury of caring about more than your character's survival can make things much more interesting. For example, the other night an NPC my character was interested in got lured into the embrace of what used to be her father, but now was a Zombie on a killing spree. I spent an absolutely nail-biting series of actions until I managed to get her away from the Zombie, until finally I got reinforced by my team members. After that incident, I can swear I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of my ears... The thing is, I knew that the my odds at saving her might very well be much, much worse than my own odds at saving myself in a similar situation. Let's for argument assume that my odds at saving her were a mere 30%. I have great problems seeing a campaign with PC survival odds so low - with 2/3 of them dying every battle, you would have absolutely no continuity and overall plot. Were my odds of saving the NPCs [i]really[/i] so low? I don't know, since I don't know what the numbers were behind the DM screen. But the [i]threat[/i] that they [i]might[/i] have been so bad was very real to me. To me, "characters don't die, but they can fail miserably" is more simulationistic - if you simulate books and movies, that is. How popular would Robert E. Howard have been if Conan the barbarian had died in the third chapter of the first book, only to be replaced by Ronald the Barbarian for two and a half volumes, who is substituted by Donald the Barbarian, who is... [/QUOTE]
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