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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8248453" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Perhaps we mean different things. Most of what I said was backed up by actual conversation with my players, so...yeah. And I've never been in a group where you played multiple PCs."Tradition" and "inertia" are nowhere near deep enough to be the kind of connection I mean. I don't really understand how one can be connected to the story or party without a character involved with it. Obviously, the friendships remain, but those are a prerequisite for having a connection to this game, not a sufficient condition for one--and I feel like that generalizes pretty well. Unless your friendship only happened BECAUSE of a game, the friendship isn't what connects you to that world, story, party, or whatever else.Yeah, this notion is pretty alien to me, and definitely not how my players see it. They're not gambling, they're exploring, learning, growing. Growth often involves loss or pain, but growth ends with death.Not especially. A game can either be pure luck, pure skill, or a mix. If skill can influence probability to any degree, the game cannot be pure luck. If skill cannot eliminate probability entirely, the game cannot be pure skill. Most games are a mix of skill and luck, and I don't really see how one can argue that most (if not all) TTRPGs are anything but a mix. There's a reason I call rolled stats "ability roulette" (because there is no skill involved in what stats you roll), but I don't call combat "attack roulette" (because there is skill involved in combat).You have severely excessive confidence in the ability to procedurally generate new content. It is not as easy as you make it sound, and it can in fact be an awful lot of work. Indeed, a lot of work for little to no payoff, since most players won't engage with it meaningfully, and it's very hard to put particularly engaging things into such content. Minecraft works as well as it does because it has very nearly zero goals beyond exploring and creating. (There's the Enderdragon, of course, but that's more "achievement-hunting" than a goal-of-play per se.)Generating randomly-made cityscape content in a way that even remotely makes sense, not even touching "enjoyable to see and drive around in," is not really within the scope of computer game coding today. You might be able to do it with a particularly well-trained generative neural-net, but that would require a lot of effort for dubious payoff....do you actually believe most professional sports players are cheaters? That is a terribly depressing concept. More importantly, even if I grant this, why would professional, competitive sport logic apply to a leisure-time, cooperative experience?I do not understand why you needed to end an argument here?If the players don't respect the DM, anything CAN break the game. A foul mood. A bit of bad beef. Raising one's voice. Anything. Because, when the respect is lost, players no longer feel the need to listen, nor to act with courtesy, restraint, or positivity. Respect is so deeply important for all relationships for exactly that reason; when you have it, most problems are relatively easy to solve, and when you don't, even the smallest problem can be (in this case, literal) Game Over.IME, it is entirely possible to be forthright and also not hurtful with your words. While I can grant that there is some room for "people need to be able to handle honest statements, even if they aren't easy to stomach," that's only half the story. The truth is NOT an excuse. Being respectful and kind can totally still happen while speaking honestly. It requires effort, to be sure, but most things worth doing do. If a player genuinely cannot speak both honestly and respectfully to the other players in the group, they need to leave--for their own good and the group's.If you are  having any "behind the back talk, rumors, lobbying" etc., then I repeat that the problem is far, far greater than whether the DM has final authority; the game is already dead, you're just watching it fall apart in real time.Yes, I would say that's different. I find most people feel attacked if you speak to them like this in front of the group, and respond very negatively as a result--essentially, "you're trying to destroy my reputation, and I won't stand for that." If approached in private, however, they tend to be much more willing to listen, because that gives them control over what is shared with the group, and what is not.Perhaps this is so, but (as noted) my players have never seriously entertained it. As I said, it's been a one-off statement from a couple people over the span of three years. One said (more or less) "I wanna go to ALL the places," which obviously can't be done simultaneously. (We'd learned about a the existence of a faraway nation, and that spiked his curiosity; but both IC and OOC, he couldn't justify ACTUALLY leaving, he just had the urge to explore.) The other, at an entirely different and unrelated time, said in a very clearly facetious voice, "I mean, we COULD just walk away," and I said what I said to you (that I would support it, but feel disappointed). That player then clarified that they had no interest in actually doing so, because there were too many open questions needing answers, but that it meant a lot to them that they knew I truly was willing to support that.I am very unlikely to run another game in this homebrew setting, as it has to compete with other setting ideas (mine and others'), and I'd want something fresh and different. So while it is theoretically an opportunity, it is much more like a loss, as it means the stuff I thought was cool, and that the party had contributed to up to that point, won't get to see the light of play for many years and, in all likelihood, forever.It's pretty loose in certain ways, but not in others. Certainly less granular than D&D in most ways, though. Combat is a likely way to lose items, but don't forget that 4e is also a game I love dearly. Skill Challenges can absolutely have costs like losing a magic item, and I bring that same perspective to DW: "Undertake a Perilous Journey" might afford a player the chance to re-roll a bad roll by consuming the power of one of their magic items, if that makes sense in context (e.g. the cloak of nature concealment our Ranger wears).I am surely not saying that it is NEVER the case that items matter a ton. But I'm pretty sure it's not exactly controversial that the individual character-story, the individual "this is the part of this game that I am responsible for," is incredibly more likely to be dear to the player's heart. You lose the character, you may not get all those shiny items back, even if the party has them. Lose the item, the character can always find a substitute/replacement, or attempt to re-create or even exceed the original.Not exactly what I'm going for. I more mean, failure to engage with mysteries, refusal to experiment, because the unknown is scary, and scary things may take away their character, and having their character taken away means ceasing to have a presence within the world. It's a real conundrum, 'cause they really do love learning the mysteries and defeating the baddies and all that, but they've got a very "play it safe, don't rock the boat, don't do anything risky" attitude. We lack for an instigator, more or less.The real problem here is that I have tried to do so (and DW actually kind of leans into this, e.g. failed rolls give XP)...it just hasn't super worked. The players consciously WANT to get rewards and do cool things, but their skittish behavior means they tend to avoid risk even when it has reward attached, even when that means getting little or nothing in terms of reward. Hence why I focus on trying to mitigate a really basal anxiety (fear of character loss), so that they'll be (more) willing to take risks.Yeah, I don't think I can do this. Not just because I don't think it would go over well with the group, but because I don't feel comfortable with it myself.I do appreciate the advice, but...honestly, this sounds like, "Do this thing, so you can play the way I do, rather than the way you do that is working for you." I don't need to teach my players to have a cavalier attitude about character death, because that attitude isn't needed to have fun in my game.As for me, I basically only game online, and there would literally be no way for me not to game online with this group, as we live hundreds of miles apart.At least two of my players have diagnosed anxiety that can lead to panic attacks, and at least one of my players has diagnosed depression. I'm pretty sure I have both, but am not diagnosed. We don't exactly have ideal lives at present, and there's plenty of stress, loss, and unpleasant history for each of us. Having a bright world they can protect, and a secure investment into that world (even if all the rest of it can--in theory--come tumbling down), makes the crappy parts of our daily lives that much more bearable.Beyond that? We take our fun seriously. I don't really know what else to tell you. We absolutely crack dumb jokes and have game-specific memes ("<Name>, you're in a hole. Why are you in a hole? Don't be in a hole."). We kid around and goof off. But we also see the game as a collective effort, something built, loved, shared. That has a certain seriousness to it. Just as you would not casually fling about the pieces of a hand-carved wooden chess set simply because chess is a game, even though you may say silly things when knocking over a captured piece. We have a certain serious joy that arises from the earnest engagement with the unfolding story.I don't approve of PVP at my table. If players wish to compete for something, that's on them, but outright "one PC attacks another" stuff isn't acceptable. We can work out how to resolve the conflict one way or another, I fully support the PCs disagreeing with each other strenuously. But I'm not going to run a game where PCs plot to eliminate each other or cause harm to one another. That's a level of stress none of us need.That would be where I'd like to end up, yes. You wanna do crazy things that might get you killed, but might be awesome? I have your back, mango. I want to see you be awesome. I want to see you fly high. Of course, the more risks you take, the more Problems there will be, but dealing with Problems is part of the fun. I just won't take away...not so much the "opportunity" to deal with the Problems, but the possibility of doing so. A permadead character has no possibility of doing so. A living one has the possibility, but may not get the opportunity.And that's really the issue, I think. Permadeath is the destruction of possibility. Nothing is possible for a permanently dead character (likewise for a fancy sword that has no character to wield it). Possibility remains if life remains, but just because it's theoretically possible, doesn't mean it will happen. Maybe you never get an opportunity. Maybe you do, but you screw up. Maybe the only opportunity you'll ever get requires you to do something you really, really don't want to do. Those are interesting--and often represent loss cases.</blockquote>

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