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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5195247" data-attributes="member: 53980">IMO character death is fine, but it shouldn't be equated with failure.Death only creates the illusion of failure, because most of the time when a character dies the player can just roll up another.  Joe the Fighter replaces John the Cleric (deceased).I much prefer plot-oriented failure in lieu of death.  The evil wizard succeeding with his ritual and nuking Pleasantville from orbit imparts a far more significant sense of failure IME, because beloved NPCs under the PCs' protection are now dead.  Their game world has been changed, and not for the better.  Of course, you can use both types of failure, but if the new PCs aren't associated with Pleasantville in some way, it will distance those players from that failure.The greatest loss resulting from death is that the player potentially loses the ties he had to NPCs and prior events.  As far as I've seen, that's generally a negative result that impacts the gaming group as a whole.  Joe doesn't have John's friendly rivalry with the Duke, and thus the group loses out on what could have been some very entertaining role play.Character death is, for the most part, a minor change in the overall "story".  Protagonist A leaves the cast of characters and Protagonist B takes his place.  Same story, different character.  I find that as a consequence of failure death, more often than not, fails.</blockquote>