NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9481970" data-attributes="member: 42582">Some of the discussion in this thread feels like it's time-travelled forward from 1990!All the issues around stakes and tension, death spirals, whether death should even be on the table, etc - these are solved problems in RPG design.That's not to say that there is a unique best solution - there is no unique best RPG, any more than there is a unique best card game - but it's not like we need to be groping in the dark to try and find a working system that incorporates whatever we want in these respects.There is also the 4e approach, in which most mechanical oomph is per-encounter, but there are a smaller number of less-easily-recharged "spike" abilities (dailies) and an overall attrition mechanic (healing surges).There are endless excellent RPGs with death spiral mechanics.Rolemaster is a classic, with a recently-released new version. HARP is RM-lite, but keeps a version of its death spiral.My favourite FRPG is Burning Wheel. It has a death spiral, and PCs can easily carry meaningful injuries over multiple sessions.One thing that BW has in common with RM is that recovery of injury by rest, and the passage of time, is a much bigger deal than it typically is in D&D (which features much more ubiquitous and effective magical healing).Marvel Heroic RP also has a death spiral, despite its generally non-sim mechanics. And of other RPGs I enjoy, Torchbearer and Classic Traveller both have death spiral elements, though on an attrition basis rather than a within-the-encounter basis.I never did it, but 4e D&D is also reasonably easily adjusted to include a death spiral, by using the disease/curse track to represent ongoing injuries.Personally, I find an approach to play in which PC death (or TPK) is the default, or the only real, stakes of conflict is one which produces very emotionally shallow, "video-gamey" or Fighting Fantasy-type RPGing.I mean, in my day-to-day life I am very rarely at significant risk of death, but things challenge and move me. And the most emotionally engaging stories I read, films I watch, etc are rarely about the risk of death.The simplest RPG I know that has a universal resolution rule, which permits any sort of emotional, dramatic or "narrative" stakes, is Greg Stafford's masterpiece Prince Valiant. I know - from the experience of play of the system - that it easily allows establishing situations that are comic, that are dramatic, where the players (as their PCs) will care about and pursue lofty goals or trivial ones.And the most important principle around PC death is stated on p 26 of the Prince Valiant rulebook: "Normally death is not an important part of Prince Valiant." That does not create any obstacle to emotional depth.I posted the following earlier this year:The questions are not rhetorical, in that there are answers available at least in some approaches to D&D - Streetwise checks, skill challenges, etc. But I don't think the most typical approaches to D&D tend to foreground these sorts of situations, or try to approach their resolution in a non-fiat way.It's not my job, or aspiration, to try and change what WotC publishes, or mainstream approaches to D&D. But for anyone who is interested in broadening or deepening the stakes and scope of their FRPGing - who wants their play to focus on more than DPR balance among the PCs, and to be more than colourful but low-stakes exploration that links combat encounter to combat encounter - I would suggest having a look around at how other RPGs have done this. There might be stuff that can be incorporated into your D&D play; or you might decide to take up a different RPG. But, as I said at the start of this post, these are solved problems.</blockquote>

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