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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8934615" data-attributes="member: 6790260">While fair, I was discussing in the context of doing so.In most things I am quite sincere, it is sometimes more a stumbling block than a help, so I appreciate that you gave me the benefit of the doubt on that front.But yeah, I do tend to get upset about character deaths. I have gotten more upset about other characters dying than over my own characters' deaths--indeed, more upset than that character's actual player. It hits me hard. My distinct preference is long-running games (as in, two years or more of weekly play), so having most likely the entire roster (4-6 deaths) effectively guaranteed to die over the course of a game would indeed be massively demoralizing for me. Knowing that such odds await, I would struggle to justify investment.Let me give an example of a similar thing which has affected my ability to play a video game I received as a gift (and thus feel guilty about not playing): Cyberpunk 2077. I had the ending spoiled by accident while I was looking up stuff that shouldn't have contained spoilers. Obviously, don't click if you want to avoid the same spoilers.[SPOILER="Cyberpunk 2077 Ending Spoilers!"]One of the early events in the game is that a good friend, Jackie Welles, dies on V's (the player character) first "big" mission. That's sad, of course, but by itself wouldn't be enough to ruin my experience. The death comes so early that I haven't had time to become that attached. However, you also get the data-ghost of Johnny Silverhand uploaded into your brain, and getting him out of your brain is a key plot point. By the time you actually get someone who can do that though, you find out that it's too late. Johnny's engram has been present inside your head for too long. Either both V and Johnny die, or Johnny gets the body (whether by absorbing V or V departing the body for cyberspace.) You get a choice of leaving your body behind and allowing Johnny to live out the rest of your life in it, or accepting that you'll die either as yourself or with Johnny still in your head. There are some variations on this, but it's pretty well established that no matter what happens, V-as-V is almost certainly dead or removed from the world within 6 months of the game's end.Once I learned this, a ton of my initial investment and interest disappeared, and I have struggled to get back into it. The intent was for it to be emotionally powerful only after you'd invested, so it would hurt, I get that, and if it had been delivered as intended it probably would have had that impact, making all your adventures bittersweet. But because I now know about it in advance, I just...don't feel any desire to invest, knowing that whatever I put in will be torn down.I get exactly the same feeling from knowing there's an intentionally "high," as far as I'm concerned, lethality rate in a game. All my care, all my invested interest, all the things I try to nurture and build up, are a couple bad rolls from being just erased. Why bother committing myself to that, knowing it will just hurt when it gets ripped away, unceremoniously? I don't engage in TTRPGs looking to get hurt, but being probabilistically certain that it will happen, indeed almost certainly repeatedly, just drains away whatever motives I might have for caring. I'm left wondering what the point of the activity is.[/SPOILER]Totally reasonable.</blockquote>

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