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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 37777" data-attributes="member: 259">I'll ask a few questions:When you first read the Hobbit, what did you think were the chances that Bilbo would get killed by Smaug?When you first saw Return of the Jedi, what did you think the chances were that Luke would be killed by Darth or the Emperor?When you first saw Die Hard, what did you think were the chances that Bruce Willis would die?Now, lemme ask some more questions:Was Bilbo's scene in Smaug's cave suspenseful?  Did Bilbo come across as a sneaky hero?Was Luke's fight against Darth and the Emperor exciting?  Did Luke come across as a hero?Was Die Hard just one big mindless action fest?  Did Bruce come across as a hero?If you answered the questions the way I did, you'll find that a real fear of death on the part of the "audience" isn't necessary for a story to be suspenseful, or for the protagonists to be heroes.Now, gaming is different:  the audience and the protagonist are one and the same.  But as far as death is concerned, the DM is the ultimate author, and the players are the ultimate audience.The players, I suggest, don't need to fear death for their characters in order for the game to be suspenseful or exciting, or to feel that their PCs are heroes.The PCs, on the other hand, need to fear death.For the first 15 years of my DMing, I don't recall ever killing a character.  Yet people told me that my battles were pretty exciting, pretty suspenseful -- they regularly ended with only one or two party members standing.  I often fudged results to achieve this:  I'd add abilities, hit points, or spells to monsters to make them tougher, and I'd remove the same thing to make monsters weaker.I saw my job to put fear of death into the PCs' minds, not the players' minds.  The players could feel the fear vicariously and still have fun, just as they did when reading the Hobbit.I'm still loathe to kill PCs too often, and I'll fudge on the fly to minimize death if I need to.  In fact, I killed a PC three sessions ago, and the game has been so grim since then that the fun factor has gone way down, I think.It's definitely an issue all DMs should think about, and it's an absurd issue to get up on a high horse about.  Different types of games encourgae different approaches:  a four-color action game can survive PC death, whereas a low-fantasy game with lots of angst can become unbearable.Daniel</blockquote>

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