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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6933132" data-attributes="member: 996">Yeah, and it doesn't always make sense.  Especially that odd reluctance to kill the BBEG, especially after blithely murdering a horde of his minions - possibly all-un-witting hirelings - or even though it'll mean a lot more people getting killed as a result.Sometimes I think part of the appeal of RPGs is that it lets us questionably-socialized nerds thumb our noses at societal and literary conventions and 'do it right' (logically/pragmatically/whatever - if amorally) - including ruthlessly & dishonorably murdering the 'bad' guys, nuking the site from orbit, or whatever.  F 'heroism' there's usually a safer, more effective way.  Often involving creative abuse of a spell.Part of it, in classic D&D, specifically, is the 'life is cheap' message of fragile first level characters.  When it takes you a number of dead PCs to finally get a decent character going, you've learned that living vs dying is not that big a deal in context.In 5e, Inspiration.  I don't much care for it (or any other carrot/stick RP-enforcement), but it's there.Developing NPCs and making the players care about them is a lot harder, but could also work - you have to engage their empathy (and they have to have it to begin with - and there's that gamers-are-unempathic stereotype).  Nothing much to do with mechanics, though.</blockquote>