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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5462475" data-attributes="member: 2067">It happens, but it's rare, and it's gotta be the right mix (the group, the DM, the timing). Which is fine. It should be rarer in D&D. It's harder to pull off this sort of thing in a game, since you are not the only one with control over the narrative, and tragedy requires a high level of control. If a beloved NPC dies, what's to stop the party from trying to resurrect her, or contacting her ghost, or journeying to her resting place and striking up a conversation with her at-peace spirit? Even knowing such things are theoretically possible robs some of the emotional punch from the scenario.And then, if you forbid that kind of stuff, it can lead to a "Trying to Bring Back Aeris" scenario, where the players get irked because they can't reverse your plot point. It really requires a careful alignment of DM and player goals and trust and receptivity that is very difficult to achieve. And it's not always good -- people can get annoyed that you made them cry (or tried to make them cry) in a fantasy game about gumdrop elves in the forest of magic unicorns. Why would anyone want to do that, in a game that is, for them, partially about escapism, or just hanging out with friends? IMO, if you've done it, and it worked for you, that's great, but it's not something D&D (or any interactive medium) is well-suited to. The narrative flow of a game is inherently an optimistic one (or comedic, in the old-school definition of the term): you have a goal, you're prevented by a conflict, and then you overcome the conflict to achieve the goal.Unless you're absolutely sure that your whole group is on board to absorb a story and is OK with sad stories and tragic tales as part of that (a subset of a subset of a subset if there ever was one), I wouldn't try it. And if you've got such a subset, I imagine a DM that tries their hand at telling a sad story will probably succeed. (I've done it before -- once, a PC's beloved brother became a sacrificial victim for her corrupted uncle -- but it is honestly not something I take any joy in inflicting in a game, so I tend to shy away from it...though my stories aren't so light. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)</blockquote>

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