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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7053424" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just to give a couple of possibilities - they might care about the organisation the NPC leads, or some family member who will be left grieving or impoverished by the death. Or it might simply be a device for managing the unfolding of the fiction - an unexpected assassination can be a useful tool for making the emergence of some other conflict, which the players are invested in, seem plausible within the fiction.&nbsp;[MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is not saying that there shouldn't be deaths of NPCs which make the players feel the force of it. He's saying (or at least, I'll paraphrase him as saying) that if the players are invested, then he would have the death be a consequence of the action in which they participate (presumably a consequence of failure in most cases, but not necessarily always).For instance, let's try to imagine how the Moria scene might emerge from resolution in a RPG in which Gandalf is an ally or resource that Frodo's player brought into play (Gandalf the White would then be an instance of Aragorn's player &quot;reactivating&quot; that resource). In that case, Gandalf dying to the Balrog would be a consequence of failed action resolution, probably on Frodo's part but perhaps on Aragorn's (eg maybe Aragorn's player fails a check, and Frodo's player activates some mechanic that lets him/her give Aragorn some retrospective bonus, but at a cost - and so Frodo's player sacrifices Gandalf to pay that cost).Or if you envisage a more traditional set-up, where Gandalf is a self-standing NPC ally, then Gandalf's death will be the result of combat resolution in which the players took part, and failed to adequately ensure the survival of their ally.In these sorts of scenarios the players feel the NPC's death - it's far from nothing - but it's not the sort of &quot;cheap shot&quot; that Campbell referred to. It's a tangible outcome of the players' failed action resolution.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7053424, member: 42582"] Just to give a couple of possibilities - they might care about the organisation the NPC leads, or some family member who will be left grieving or impoverished by the death. Or it might simply be a device for managing the unfolding of the fiction - an unexpected assassination can be a useful tool for making the emergence of some other conflict, which the players are invested in, seem plausible within the fiction. [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is not saying that there shouldn't be deaths of NPCs which make the players feel the force of it. He's saying (or at least, I'll paraphrase him as saying) that if the players are invested, then he would have the death be a consequence of the action in which they participate (presumably a consequence of failure in most cases, but not necessarily always). For instance, let's try to imagine how the Moria scene might emerge from resolution in a RPG in which Gandalf is an ally or resource that Frodo's player brought into play (Gandalf the White would then be an instance of Aragorn's player "reactivating" that resource). In that case, Gandalf dying to the Balrog would be a consequence of failed action resolution, probably on Frodo's part but perhaps on Aragorn's (eg maybe Aragorn's player fails a check, and Frodo's player activates some mechanic that lets him/her give Aragorn some retrospective bonus, but at a cost - and so Frodo's player sacrifices Gandalf to pay that cost). Or if you envisage a more traditional set-up, where Gandalf is a self-standing NPC ally, then Gandalf's death will be the result of combat resolution in which the players took part, and failed to adequately ensure the survival of their ally. In these sorts of scenarios the players feel the NPC's death - it's far from nothing - but it's not the sort of "cheap shot" that Campbell referred to. It's a tangible outcome of the players' failed action resolution. [/QUOTE]

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