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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8186432" data-attributes="member: 97077">Yeah, the DM bailing out a player from the consequences of their own decisions can often feel worse than the consequences themselves. I don't get upset about my characters dying. In fact, there have been many instances where I see a good death coming and lean into it because a good death is very memorable (which is one of the goals of play!). But for whatever reason the DM let up and it didn't happen, leading to my disappointment. A DM trying to spare a player's feelings may end up in a worse situation than if things played out as normal.There's also a thing nowadays where character investment happens before play because players are asked to write relatively extensive backstories or the like. I get why people do it but it only feeds into the dissatisfaction later on that the "work" put into the character has been lost perhaps before they even leave apprentice tier. This is exacerbated if the DM has written whole plots or subplots around the character's backstory. This is why, in part, I don't ask players to do anything in particular prior to play. If they write a backstory, I ask them to keep it to the length of a tweet. If their characters die, oh well, it's not like a ton of their work was "wasted," and none of my plots or subplots are disrupted because I'm not basing anything in the campaign on their backstories. Write the story of the character during play, not before play, I say.</blockquote>

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