Getting "screwed over" can be a lot of fun.

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So last night we are playing D&D and come across a situation where we can draw from a Deck of Many Things, a classic D&D artifact which surprisingly in 30 years of playing D&D I have never encountered. So of course we are all fired up to see what happens. The demon told us to say how many cards we want and we were given them. One player lost 4 points of INT but got a somewhat mediocre magic item. Another only took one card and took a permanent -1 on all saves. Another lost all his magic items and since it was 3.5 it was several. There were a few other draws then I got the Rogue, which hasn't come into effect quite yet, and got enough XP to jump two levels! Which due to the nature of the item the DM allowed. We were alternating between laughing our butts off, and cursing fate for the luck of the draw. Some PC's took a permanent hit in ability yet after the game we were talking about the session like it was the best session we had in a long time, its one of the most memorable no doubt.

Sometimes getting hosed by quirky RPG things is a lot of fun.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Some of the most fun I've had in RPGs has come from memorable character deaths. To me there's something a lot more interesting in continuing to tell the story of a character's death than having death completely removed as a failure option.