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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9531212" data-attributes="member: 29398">...yes?  (your example got chopped off somewhere in posting, not by me)And if I'm reading that right, Sheridan knows going in that he'll be able to come back from death?  That certainly makes it non-permanent from his (or in D&D, his player's) perspective.There's also what might be called "story alongside", where things go on in background parts of the setting that the PCs don't touch and the PCs may or may not hear about - or even be affected by - those things later; meanwhile the PCs do what they do and their own story emerges from that.There's a difference, too, in Dragonlance-style story-before (where the whole thing runs to a predetermined outcome) and what I prefer, which is that there's one or more potential stories laid out but the outcome(s) - or even the path of the story/stories; they can always left-turn to something else - is not determined until after the players/PCs do whatever they decide to do or not do.I've had story-now explained to me before in a few different ways, most of which (despite the explainers' best attempts) mostly come across to me as nothing I'd want any real part of.In about 1985 I played a character named Terriann.  She was a low-level MU coming new into a higher-level party, and her played career consisted of meeting the party, making it halfway to her first adventure, getting breathed on by a Black Dragon, and keeling over dead.  Three sessions, tops.The fact that I still remember this, 39 years later, tells me that playing her was not at all a waste of time.  Did she contribute much to her party?  No.  Did her own story get told?  No, other than its acid-drenched end.  Did she give me a few memories I still carry today?  Yes.  And the last of these is the only thing that matters, in a personal sense for who a character was and what it did and in a group sense for what the party was and did.We're into comparing anecdotal experience here but I suspect that "lot of players" isn't as widespread as you seem to think.I agree video games can't give the same experience...yet.  Given enough time and processor power the day will come when they'll be able to a) generate bespoke setting elements (places, NPCs, etc.) on the fly based on where the player goes and what the player does there, b) seamlessly integrate those new setting elements into what was already present for that player, and c) store and remember those setting elements for the rest of that campaign.To the bolded: yes they do.  The history of a dead character and what it did is not deleted.  Otherwise it'd be like saying the history of Queen Elizabeth II and what she did will be deleted because she's dead.  The character's history remains, in the memories of the players and (one hopes!) in the campaign's logs and records.Just because I'm not playing the same character all the way through a campaign doesn't mean I-as-player lose touch with that campaign's history, and in-fiction I just assume the veterans will tell these stories to my new recruit over the campfire each night until I've heard them all.</blockquote>

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