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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9551655" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Sure. Extremely low-power can be a way to create a grounded character.It it is both not the only way, nor necessarily the best way. Respectfully, I have to disagree with both you and one of my favorite writers, C.S. Lewis, on this front. Sometimes, seeing the familiar subjected to the strange is truly excellent for getting people engaged and appreciative. Other times, having the strange be subjected to familiar situations accomplishes that task better. Sometimes, being surprised to find you relate to a strange person in a strange situation is better. There is no strict relation here and demanding that ALL players of ALL games can ONLY be allowed to be near-incompetent everyman/everywoman farmboy/farmgirl characters is a disservice to both the fantasy(/sci-fi) and to the diversity and potential of TTRPGs. Everyman should be included; it should be a well-supported, bedrock archetype anyone can focus on if it tickles their fancy. Making it the only archetype folks are allowed to have, unless they reach ultra-high level, is not acceptable nor appropriate. Doubly so when extreme character lethality and extremely slow level growth are demanded to come along for the ride.Paul Atreides is a compelling and interesting character. He is also never, at any point in his life, an everyman. He's the legitimate son of a space duke, he's special from the moment of his birth, he survives things that should normally have killed men of greater experience, he almost intuitively knows the ways of the Fremen before ever meeting them, he becomes Emperor of the Known Universe, he awakens as effectively Space Messiah, etc., etc. At no point in the entirety of the original four Dune novels (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and God Emperor of Dune) are any of the leading characters even remotely ordinary people leading even remotely ordinary lives. Yet they are still some of the best sci-fi around. Conversely, something like Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is so thoroughly mundane that you barely even need its sci-fi premise; it has all of like two scenes where sci-fi is truly necessary to the story, and none where it's actually necessary to the plot. (Well, I guess, other than the fact that Genly sticks out amongst Gethenians since they only develop distinct sexual characteristics cyclically, but that could be handled with non-sci-fi stuff.) Genly is almost painfully normal, and he goes through trials that, while not exactly normal for most humans, are extremely grounded in most cases, the telepathic experience notwithstanding.Sure! That's why there should be rules that support your preference for low-power, slow-progression, high-lethality, "gritty" play. I've never said otherwise, and have frequently brought up that specific interest as something I think deserves explicit and well-made representation within the games rules.But you have yet to show that, simply because you aren't interested in other things, why EVERYONE should be subjected to those limitations, or else just get less game to play.No, they don't. They make it better for some things and worse for others. Mechanical loss conditions that are absolutely final are a particularly piquant example, and as a result they are not for all contexts. I mean, you literally even just gave an example up-thread of a context where this specific mechanical loss condition--absolutely final death on characters--would be bad.They aren't unalloyed goods. Mechanical loss conditions are a tool. That tool has a place. Other tools also exist and should be considered. Why this specific tool is the one so many people demand ABSOLUTELY MUST be enforced on absolutely everyone, I don't know.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You have here falsely claimed that mechanical loss conditions as the only way to have the possibility of loss. You can have "the possibility of loss" without having mechanical loss conditions.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You have implied that mechanical win conditions are the only possible win conditions. This is also false--particularly in D&D, where so many people are quite eager to point out that you cannot truly "win" D&D, you can only win in a specific context or scenario.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Consider a game like Tetris. It has a mechanical loss condition. You are still permitted to keep playing after that loss condition. Does this mean that someone achieving a high score in Tetris has achieved only and exclusively a hollow victory? I certainly don't think so.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">D&D--indeed, any game--can express loss conditions, even mechanical ones, that are interesting without being experience-terminating (using "experience" instead of "story" since people seem to be allergic to the latter). Many of the mechanical loss conditions D&D has used are not very interesting. This is the problem being highlighted here.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Even if we do keep some of those mechanical loss conditions--e.g. level/stat drain, limb loss, various flavors of death since (as I hope I have established) not all deaths are the same--we can express them in different ways, that can work better with continuing the player's current experience, rather than completely trashing that experience and starting from scratch.</li> </ol>Then come up with more mechanical loss conditions. I don't see how that's that onerous a task.Even if it is onerous: Make death more interesting. If you're the one claiming EVERYONE needs to be on board with this horrifically ultra-lethal world, sell us on it. Stop saying that it is just flatly superior to any other way to play without explanation, and instead SHOW how it appeals even to folks like me who are skeptical. Show, don't tell.How many of us have asked for death to be "completely off the table"?</blockquote>

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