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="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 8245709" data-attributes="member: 93631">Trying to actually respond to the OP. You allow that fear (of character death) can be effective at producing certain behaviors, but argue that (for you) "fear is boring" and motivating only insofar as you want to eliminate it.That's fair. I really don't get how anyone could argue with this. Don't play the game in a way you find boring!What's most interesting to me is that I don't want to eliminate fear from the game, whether or not it's motivating. I've played fearless characters in "old-school" games (for a while...), characters who weren't at all motivated by fear (for example, a cleric who ardently believed his god would protect him and that heaven awaited him on the other side in any case), and perhaps especially for characters like this, I still wouldn't want player fear of character death to be eliminated.For me, "motivation" isn't even the point--whether "fear of death" motivates or not, and how it motivates if it does, depends on the character. For me, there are two points. The first point of character death being on the table is to facilitate immersion. I can get into the head-space of a zealot who believes his god will protect him, and it's fun because I as a player know he may very well be wrong about that. I'm not a good enough method actor to be immersed in a character when I know for a fact that the character has script immunity. The second point is a gamier one. One thing I really enjoy about RPGs in extended campaigns is character progression, both in the lit sense and the game sense. But even in the lit sense, what sets the RPG experience apart from writing a story is that I can't give "my guy" script immunity. Part of the enjoyment and satisfaction of progression in an RPG is the knowledge that the character might have been eaten by a giant rat the moment he set foot outside town. Progression is uniquely fun in an RPG, because unlike when I'm writing fiction, it isn't a given. That's what makes it a game.</blockquote>

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