With that provocative title to grab your attention, let me explain what I mean. Please, as with all things of this type, keep in mind a giant neon sign that says, "OBVIOUSLY NOT APPLICABLE TO 100% OF PEOPLE."
In D&D of even a somewhat "old school" bent, it has always seemed to me that the game outright encourages inducing paranoia in your players. Making them distrust every offer of allegiance, every kind gesture, every calm scene, every peaceful town. Making them rightfully believe that they're in constant danger of losing their ability to participate in play, aka, in constant danger of character permadeath, for light and transient causes. I've even been told, just recently and on this very forum, that such paranoia absolutely is how play should work.
To that, I say bollocks.
Yes, fear is an "effective" motivator, in the narrow sense that it usually succeeds at producing some kind of response. But being effective at producing some kind of response at all is not the same as being effective at producing an enjoyable experience.
Fear alone is, in all honesty, kind of boring. I mean, it's "exciting" in a certain sense, but at least for me, only because I want it to go away. It is "exciting" in the way that a nasty, dramatic, but temporary illness is "exciting": it disrupts, confuses, and invites rash action. And the consequences of death for the player experience are...not getting to play anymore. Instead of creating new stakes, new costs, new challenges, character death just...ends everything. That can of course mean loss for the other players, but for the individual directly affected, it just means "you LOSE. Good DAY, sir!"
Again, I do not mean to rail against the use of fear as ONE tool in the toolbox. But for me it is best used sparingly, a pungent spice to be added as needed, not a core ingredient. Instead, for my part, the main motivators should be enthusiasm and affection.
Enthusiasm typically manifests as the player bringing something to the table. A personal story idea they like. A race they want to play. An open-ended mysterious backstory, or maybe a unique trait or quirk that sets something in motion. Feeding and supporting genuine player enthusiasm--that is, rooted in simple joy about something, and not a desire to exploit or coerce--is much more effective as a base motivator in my experience. It gives the player a feeling of belonging, even ownership; the game is, in at least some small part, "theirs," and that motivates them to see it flourish and change. As long as the player understands that supporting their enthusiasm does not mean guaranteeing success (failure is a vital part of most stories worth telling!), I see few ways that genuine enthusiasm produces perverse incentives.
Affection, meanwhile, tends to be more reactive. It's the player's response to things, characters, and events as they unfold. That silly NPC the DM threw in as a joke, who became a beloved friend and whose noble sacrifice to save the party was both tragic and triumphant in turns. The way an offhand remark about family grows into a whole adventure to save them. These bits of affection, when nurtured, become key parts of the game the players will remember fondly, long after play ends. And they motivate players, not out of fear of losing these things like some miser hoarding his coin, but out of the desire to help and support them, to see them grow and improve rather than decline or lose. Unless it's directed toward those enemies you just love to hate! But I'd lump that in with affection too, even if it's an affection for rubbing the smug snake's face in the dirt. Righteous indignation!
Again: fear shouldn't be removed. It is too fundamental, too core to human experience. But its unquestioned central position, its absolute dominance of the player motivation field, is a disservice to the game. Embracing and encouraging these more positive, intrinsic motives rather than the imposed, extrinsic motive of fear...just produces better games, IMO, whether you prefer Zero to Hero or High Adventure type journeys.
If you do everything you can to have genuinely enthusiastic players who find and express affection for the game they play, fear need be only a sometimes food. Instead of paranoia and anxiety, they'll be full of passion, curiosity, indignation, maybe even pride and hope! Failure, not a dreaded menace, but an accepted difficulty on the journey.
So. How about it? Does "don't fear the reaper roller" sound like blasphemy or beatitude? Would it "not be D&D" if fear weren't the fundamental motivator of your games?
