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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9531221" data-attributes="member: 6790260">My apologies, I got distracted and failed to come back to that thought. A D&D party might lose an ally to a heroic sacrifice, and then that ally gets scooped up and saved by some kind of Big Good force that doesn't want that heroic sacrifice to have been in vain. Sorta like what happened to Gandalf in LOTR; his death was non-permanent but irrevocable. He DID die, it wasn't random but a very intentional sacrifice, and there wasn't a damned thing anyone else in that world could do about it. But he was Sent Back, with some of his power limiters removed. Irrevocable (nothing the "PC"-equivalents could do about it), but not permanent (Eru Iluvatar fixes it by direct divine intervention, something He very rarely does.)No. He has a glimmer of hope, and that's it. He and the alien, Lorien, have this conversation just before an episode ends:L: "I cannot create life. But I can breathe upon the remaining embers. (pause) It may not work."S: "But...I can hope."L: (echoing) "Hope...is all we have."That's just "story before" that happens sequentially, which is pretty much mandatory for any long-running campaign. (Nobody can be expected to write multi-year tabletop stories 100% purely in advance--not even Dragonlance was plotted that thoroughly.) That is, it's been written before and separately from what the players will do to/around it, albeit after other, prior things the players have done. They can investigate it, respond to it, interfere with it--all of the reactive things one can do with story--but they do not actually participate in its creation. Likewise, "story after" can happen sequentially as well. "Story now" is inherently sequential, because...the moment that is "now" is always moving.Sure. But all of those endings were still, to some degree, prewritten. You are not deciding the course of the river, you are merely picking whether it flows through the pre-cut east course or west course.I mean, that's fair, but just because it isn't for you doesn't mean it's for nobody. Making hard, blanket statements that disallow anyone else from doing "story now" with D&D, or any game for that matter, comes across as pretty presumptive.I want to reiterate, because it bears repeating: for you. It was not a waste of time for you. It would be a waste of time for me. I would not derive any enjoyment from that character, and the only reason I would ever remember such a character afterward is specifically because I so thoroughly did not derive any enjoyment from playing her.Alright. Does that mean this interest must then be driven out of the hobby and refused admittance?I disagree. There's a lot one can do. I don't think any non-sapient AI--no matter how advanced--can replicate the responsiveness of an actual DM. And an actually sapient AI used in this way would be slavery.Yes, it is. None of the connections matter anymore. They're as dead as the character. We, IRL, can investigate and look up history. But when we take on a role, that role matters. It isn't some flimsy nothing, a mere gossamer shawl. It is what anchors one to the world. Each and every time that anchor is destroyed, you have to rebuild it from the ground up. You must re-invent (or re-discover, if you prefer) your investment in the setting. That the history fictionally exists does remain, yes. Whether it matters, however, does not remain. And it's the mattering that counts. Things with no meaning, with no substance, provide no enjoyment. Each and every time you cut the thread of connection to the game, you have to rebuild it, practically from scratch.I do. Each and every time a character I'm playing dies, I lose the vast, overwhelming majority of my connection to that campaign's history. Your "I just assume" is something I actually need to have happen, "on screen", explicitly. Otherwise, I will never rebuild the connection I had before. It will never be as connected as the lost character was. I simply cannot become invested without playing through that. Which is why I have been saying what I've been saying. For you, such investment is a trivial effort, a nothing, easier than breathing. For me? It's monumental. I must start from ground zero every single time I try to invest into a new character.It would be like...being an author, and someone rolls 2d100 after every page you write. If it comes up 00 00, you have to scrap ALL the actual novel writing you've done and start over, though you can still use your prewriting, but not any characters or events. After the second or third time that happened, you'd probably just give up--there's no point in investing THAT MUCH time and energy into a long-form story when it's just going to be taken away from you and all you have left is your prewriting notes. That's how it feels for me to lose a character. I have to scrap the entire "novel" of that character's existence, down to the barest of bare bones, little more than a few pages of setting notes, and then try to write an entirely new novel, without using ANYTHING I used before. I just can't do it.Again, I'm not saying NOBODY can do this. But I am saying that a lot of people DO view the story of the character, and the story of the "team" (here meaning the specific people on the team, not just the coalition, since you refer to the "party" story as totally disconnected from any individual member thereof), as something damaged beyond repair when a character dies. Something that then must be totally rebuilt, from the ground up, but now running way behind everyone and everything else because, y'know, months or years of development gap.</blockquote>

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