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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4549601" data-attributes="member: 2067">Good thinkin'. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />With ya so far.Here's a bit of dissonance:Losing your PC isn't that big of a deal.It's not desirable, but once it happens, it's easy to move on. If you absolutely can't get resurrected and you fail all your saves and wind up irrevocably beyond help, it isn't a common scenario. And it lets you do something that is a lot of fun for most players: making a new character.It's rare, and it has its own rewards, so it's fine, in moderation.The death flag doesn't mean you won't ever lose your PC, typically. It means that when you might loose your PC, it'll be good for the story, rather than because of a lucky crit. You could never raise your death flag, but I'd say that any player who would never raise their death flag makes the death flag a pretty lousy rule for that group, in the same way that a player who wants to farm beets and forge swords makes a pretty lousy adventuring companion. The player has to understand that while loosing your character sucks, there are things in this world that are greater than your character, and they are thus worth fighting and dying for, even if it might suck. This has the advantage of working a whole lot like normal human mentality, which is willing to murder and risk being murdered for faiths, nations, causes, or ideals. Heck, I just saw a video of a man who jumped off the Eiffel tower trying to test his new "parachute clothes" drop like a rock and die predictably at the end. People risk their lives for parachute clothes. The death flag ensures that you won't die accidentally like random NPC's, though. You'll die HEROICALLY. If the player believes that the loosing their character is the worst thing for the game, then the death flag probably isn't appropriate for them.And when those ramifications are worse for the story, for the world, for the realm, for the princess, for the NPC's...then you risk ultimate failure.If you don't recognize that as worse than having to roll up a new character...then obviously the death flag ain't quite for you. <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=";)" />I'd say you probably wouldn't have fun with a heroic sacrifice, then, and that's mostly what the Death Flag facilitates, in the same way that a Beet Farmer wouldn't have much fun in a dungeon crawl.You'd probably have a lot of fun with an "accepted immortality" kind of house rule, though. It's not that unusual to have invincible PC's that only permenantly "die" when the retire because a player wants to try something new. FFZ has that, in fact, in order to represent the games a bit better.It's not really my default style, because I like death to be at stake, but you'd probably be cool with it, and that's okay. Different strokes and all that.Whereas most of my usual players would probably raise it at the first instance of a goblin that they just want to TOTALLY SHATTER. Seriously, go with "accepted immortality." It's totally OK to never have a PC die if it's not that fun. Story and character driven games (like FFZ) benefit greatly from this consistency. D&D is a bit more about the game on this axis, though, and I like it for that. Death flag probably wouldn't work that well for you guys. That's okay. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />With a heavily narrative game (like FFZ, and, it sounds, like your D&D games), yeah, the choice is obvious, because in a very narrative game, characters should never just die.To add a bit of dramatic WOW to a more "game" game, it helps ensure that you die when it's cool, and are preserved when it's lame. It helps you define what your character will risk their lives for -- what they feel is greater than themselves, their deity, their nation, their family -- and via that connects them more deeply to the world. It helps add a narrative element that is very cool: That dramatic sacrifice in the 11th hour for everything! It really sounds to me like your games would just benefit from some accepted immortality, though. Which is cool, I enjoy games like that, too, I just enjoy them differently from D&D.</blockquote>

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