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How to deal with death in RPG?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7590314" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I wanted to follow up on this.</p><p></p><p>I think that the perceived connection between <em>finality</em> and <em>PC death</em> is contingent. There can be other final results - eg losing your gear; failing to woo the object of your affection; failing to rescue your family from a fire.</p><p></p><p>Conversely, the emphasis in some classic FRPGing on PC death as stakes tells us something about the typical protagonist of those games.</p><p></p><p>And the notion of "thumb on the scales" in this context is tangential. A PC can have "plot armour" vis-a-vis fighting to first blood, or fighting to the death, or wooing a beloved, or whatever. Or can not. In D&D, there is no rule for a spell failing because the caster sneezes (contrast, say, The Dying Earth RPG). That's a type of plot armour, but all it means is that <em>making sure you don't sneeze while casting</em> is not at stake in that game. That doesn't mean that other meaningful stuff isn't at stake, plot armour free.</p><p></p><p>PC death isn't inherently different in this respect. (It would be if PC death meant you could never play the game again. But I don't know any table other than Jack Chick's that works that way.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7590314, member: 42582"] I wanted to follow up on this. I think that the perceived connection between [I]finality[/I] and [I]PC death[/I] is contingent. There can be other final results - eg losing your gear; failing to woo the object of your affection; failing to rescue your family from a fire. Conversely, the emphasis in some classic FRPGing on PC death as stakes tells us something about the typical protagonist of those games. And the notion of "thumb on the scales" in this context is tangential. A PC can have "plot armour" vis-a-vis fighting to first blood, or fighting to the death, or wooing a beloved, or whatever. Or can not. In D&D, there is no rule for a spell failing because the caster sneezes (contrast, say, The Dying Earth RPG). That's a type of plot armour, but all it means is that [I]making sure you don't sneeze while casting[/I] is not at stake in that game. That doesn't mean that other meaningful stuff isn't at stake, plot armour free. PC death isn't inherently different in this respect. (It would be if PC death meant you could never play the game again. But I don't know any table other than Jack Chick's that works that way.) [/QUOTE]
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