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Do players want challenging games, with a real chance of death?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9212815" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>It depends on the players. I have had two types so far, but there are reasonably some other types out there.</p><p></p><p>1) The player wants a real challenge with a real penalty of failure. Nobody really wants PC death, but the player prefers it to a game where the PCs have plot protection.</p><p>2) The player doesn't want real challenge with a real penalty of failure. The player prefers to cruise through every challenge and will cheat if necessary to do so. But the player wants to pretend to themselves that they are overcoming challenges, and as such their enjoyment would be tanked if they ever had to consciously think about the GM or the rules were preventing them from failing.</p><p></p><p>I have never had any of the following but I assume they are out there:</p><p></p><p>a) The player wants regular character death in an arbitrary and difficult game were the dice are stacked against them and no amount of good play can prevent death from stalking the party because the player prefers extreme realism to heroism and enjoys rolling up new characters. In this sort of play, the players don't have attachment to the character but to a group or organization of some sort that lives on even as individuals are chewed up by the meat grinder.</p><p>b) The player wants challenge either real or illusionary but is so attached to their character and the character's narrative that they prefer having obvious plot protection to anything that would end that narrative. Thus they don't want death, incarceration, or permanent maiming to be consequences that their character can suffer, but instead prefer that the harsh consequences of their failures fall mostly on someone else (generally an NPC).</p><p>c) The player doesn't want challenge at all and they know it. They want to be empowered and are quite happy if the rules and the GM agree that they should just be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. If the player thinks the story is more interesting if they fail, they will do so purposefully, but otherwise they want to do big cool things and exercise their imagination however they want.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9212815, member: 4937"] It depends on the players. I have had two types so far, but there are reasonably some other types out there. 1) The player wants a real challenge with a real penalty of failure. Nobody really wants PC death, but the player prefers it to a game where the PCs have plot protection. 2) The player doesn't want real challenge with a real penalty of failure. The player prefers to cruise through every challenge and will cheat if necessary to do so. But the player wants to pretend to themselves that they are overcoming challenges, and as such their enjoyment would be tanked if they ever had to consciously think about the GM or the rules were preventing them from failing. I have never had any of the following but I assume they are out there: a) The player wants regular character death in an arbitrary and difficult game were the dice are stacked against them and no amount of good play can prevent death from stalking the party because the player prefers extreme realism to heroism and enjoys rolling up new characters. In this sort of play, the players don't have attachment to the character but to a group or organization of some sort that lives on even as individuals are chewed up by the meat grinder. b) The player wants challenge either real or illusionary but is so attached to their character and the character's narrative that they prefer having obvious plot protection to anything that would end that narrative. Thus they don't want death, incarceration, or permanent maiming to be consequences that their character can suffer, but instead prefer that the harsh consequences of their failures fall mostly on someone else (generally an NPC). c) The player doesn't want challenge at all and they know it. They want to be empowered and are quite happy if the rules and the GM agree that they should just be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. If the player thinks the story is more interesting if they fail, they will do so purposefully, but otherwise they want to do big cool things and exercise their imagination however they want. [/QUOTE]
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