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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: 9213395" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Someone always makes this claim in threads like this and it never rings true to me in the slightest.</p><p></p><p>Let's take an extreme but relevant example. Suppose all your players are playing in pawn stance and suppose their sole aesthetics of play have to do with advancing their pawn and as such they are motivated to play the pawn as a ruthless sociopath only concerned with their own self-interest. Then I contend that the only forms of failure that count as failure from their perspective are things that stop them from playing their pawn which is ultimately either death or a few typically rarer and more unlikely things that are congruent to death such as incarceration for a timespan longer than the campaign, or permanent maiming or disability such the character is no longer playable in a competitive game. </p><p></p><p>Now that's an exaggerated case but it's a relevant case because in a lot of play you do have players that at least partly conform to that description. They will have other aesthetics of play and things that they value, but that's all secondary. Those tradeoffs are valued only in as much as they don't think they are risking real failure in order to engage with them.</p><p></p><p>And in general, in games where you had failure states other than death that were actually relevant, if you were to start regularly throwing out stakes like, "Would you rather take death or this other failure state" the vast and overwhelming majority of the time the player would take the other failure state no matter their aesthetics of play. I've never had a chance to test this but my suspicion is that in a mixed group of players where you had those stakes, in the long run any player that regular chose death as their failure state for some story reason or other aesthetic would gradually become dissatisfied with the game and with their choices when they got to watch players continually sacrificing to keep their character in the game and how much more rewarding that would ultimately be in the vast majority of cases. </p><p></p><p>So no, they are directly connected. You can't pretend "Oh you sacrificed the life of your nephew and now you are conflicted" is in any way a game state failure that is proportional to death unless "Conflicted" is such a steep penalty on the character that they are effectively in game maimed and unable to function as a playing piece. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down!" is not a failure state for a game compared to, "My playing piece been removed permanently from the game." Pretending that you can substitute one for the other and it's equivalent failure is just pretending. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down" is only a failure state in that more serious stakes were taken off the table so it's what you have left. This is "I prefer all the harsh consequences of my failure to fall on someone else." mode of gameplay.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9213395, member: 4937"] Someone always makes this claim in threads like this and it never rings true to me in the slightest. Let's take an extreme but relevant example. Suppose all your players are playing in pawn stance and suppose their sole aesthetics of play have to do with advancing their pawn and as such they are motivated to play the pawn as a ruthless sociopath only concerned with their own self-interest. Then I contend that the only forms of failure that count as failure from their perspective are things that stop them from playing their pawn which is ultimately either death or a few typically rarer and more unlikely things that are congruent to death such as incarceration for a timespan longer than the campaign, or permanent maiming or disability such the character is no longer playable in a competitive game. Now that's an exaggerated case but it's a relevant case because in a lot of play you do have players that at least partly conform to that description. They will have other aesthetics of play and things that they value, but that's all secondary. Those tradeoffs are valued only in as much as they don't think they are risking real failure in order to engage with them. And in general, in games where you had failure states other than death that were actually relevant, if you were to start regularly throwing out stakes like, "Would you rather take death or this other failure state" the vast and overwhelming majority of the time the player would take the other failure state no matter their aesthetics of play. I've never had a chance to test this but my suspicion is that in a mixed group of players where you had those stakes, in the long run any player that regular chose death as their failure state for some story reason or other aesthetic would gradually become dissatisfied with the game and with their choices when they got to watch players continually sacrificing to keep their character in the game and how much more rewarding that would ultimately be in the vast majority of cases. So no, they are directly connected. You can't pretend "Oh you sacrificed the life of your nephew and now you are conflicted" is in any way a game state failure that is proportional to death unless "Conflicted" is such a steep penalty on the character that they are effectively in game maimed and unable to function as a playing piece. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down!" is not a failure state for a game compared to, "My playing piece been removed permanently from the game." Pretending that you can substitute one for the other and it's equivalent failure is just pretending. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down" is only a failure state in that more serious stakes were taken off the table so it's what you have left. This is "I prefer all the harsh consequences of my failure to fall on someone else." mode of gameplay. [/QUOTE]
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