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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8711098" data-attributes="member: 6855114">Maybe I was a bit blunt. But hostile nope. Thank you for pointing this out for me.But to answer your last question. It is yes, it is better for us.So far, in nearly 4 decades of DMing. I have honestly tried almost every styles of games (save a few) in D&D and even in some others. Deathless campaigns, adversarial DMing to see what it would imply (with the accord of the group, we wanted to understand what it was all about and how bad it would be when a DM would always go against the characters, not my style), high risks campaigns, no risks campaigns and so on.So far, after a few hundreds of players, yes hundreds, the most staying and game style that kept the most players and provided the most engaging adventures has been the ones in which character death can happen. We now avoid long background stories like the plague because:1) It does not mean that the background will matter at all.2) It slows down play as a player will tend to ask that "his or her" background to be integrated into the story at hand even at the expend of other's backgrounds3) It often prevents the story to organically emerge from play. The longer the background, the more the chances are that it will interfere in someway with the story at hand. 4) It is easy for the DM to "forget" what is in the background of every single character under his/her games. I run three games with 12-18 different people (one of these game is Friday night dungeon about twice a month), imagine one minute to remember all background stories? No way. Strangely, I can retell every strong moments of the story of each groups and characters...5) To follow up on 4. Some players will get absolutely mad because the DM forgot that their character backstory included obscure references that could have meant an advantage (or not) for the story at hand!When death can happen, it often brings tension at the table when things get rough. I can tell you that in tense fights, I have players literally standing on their chairs! Some can't stay sit at the table and must stand up and walk... Last week the monk died because I had a crit while having disadvantage (yep, double 20s). Asked her which character she would like to play and if any NPC would do the trick. Happens that there was a treasure chest and instead of lock picking it, the knight simply smashed the lock in the hopes of finding a revivify scroll in it. I told him he needed a 20 to smash and got 24. And there was indeed a revivify scroll. Cheers from everyone save the newest players (a cynical person to say the least) that tells, yeah, you just invented that. I took my printed sheet on which the adventure is written. Show him the room, the number of the room and pointed out treasure. And yes, the revivify scroll was there. Had it not been there, the monk would have stayed dead. The next morning, my neighbour asked me what happened last night when all people were cheering... That poor 79 year old neighbour did not understand despite my best efforts.</blockquote>

Verification