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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7455482" data-attributes="member: 1465">Serial books need to keep selling. Kill off the main character, and you won't sell any continuation book, you'd have to find a new idea for another story. Tolkien obviously didn't need to do that because he didn't write book series, but for example Forgotten Realm novels won't likely kill off the most popular characters.Not every player is interested in personal agendas, but for those who are, the agendas are neverending. Reach one goal, they figure out another. It doesn't matter if they die between goals 3 and 4, or between goals 7 and 8.I don't fudge dice to save a PC from death.Instead, I just let a player choose between death and some other penalty.The tension is still there, even if I would let live a character that has technically died. Players don't like penalties, and they don't like feeling they are bad at the game.Yes, the DM fudging or helping with ex-machina intervention has a negative effect. That's why I don't do those.Negotiating a penalty instead of death is not the same. A price to pay for the player is still there.And actually if you think about it, when you enforce PC's death, there is nothing a DM could do to prevent a player create a new character that is basically identical to the previous. If the DM just says no, it feels an unfair intrusion over character creation, and will have a negative effect on the game too. If the DM says yes, it still feels very sour from a story point of view (e.g. the old "turns out my PC had a twin who is now taking over" is really bad).So if the player has the intention of creating essentially a copycat PC, it's just better to let her keep playing the previous. It is generally accepted by players to receive a penalty in exchange for this.Before that however, I actually encourage players to let their PC go, and see it as an opportunity to play a different characters. There are 12 classes, 9 races and 40 archetypes in the PHB to try!I remind the players that for every unfinished business they have, as a DM I probably have at least 20 unfinished businesses <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Other than that, agendas and goals are good also when they are aren't achieved, because they serve as a compass. I always say that, as most things in life, the journey towards a goal isn't a mean to the end... it's the goal that works as a mean to make you take the journey, which is the real end.</blockquote>

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