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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8957752" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here is the post to which you are replying:Suppose the thing you did was to support a coup. And the coup fails. And now you're banished - and have probably lost much of your wealth and fame in the process. Why would you not care?Your reply strikes me as an utter non-sequitur. It appears to me that many revolutionaries are "ready to pay the price" in the sense that a failed attempt at revolution can lead to exile, death, imprisonment etc, they are aware of this, and they proceed regardless. But most of these failed revolutionaries also care, in that (i) they would prefer not to suffer those losses, and (ii) they would prefer their revolution to succeed rather than fail.I've GMed FRPG campaigns in which some PCs are part of political movements of various sorts (in some cases initiating them). Our play has taken it absolutely for granted that the players, both as participants in the game and as "inhabitants" of their PCs, care about whether or not those movements achieve their goals, whether or not their PCs succeed or fail, etc.I remain utterly baffled by your suggestion that the norm, here, is to not care.Why is that the only viable option? History is replete with revolutionaries and coup leaders who identified and pursued other options. There's no reason why this can't also happen in RPGing.There are so many assumptions built into this it's hard to know how to start unpacking them.Here are the two obvious ones: that the character has no emotional connection to the coup or its cause; and that the character has no emotional connection to their homeland. Again, history is replete with counter-examples to those two assumptions, and so there is no reason why those assumptions should be true in RPGing.This is a spurious distinction, or at least a gerrymandered one. If you define failure = character death (or similar loss of the player's playing piece then by definition other sorts of loss or setback do not constitute failures. But so what? Why is your definition of failure of any interest? What does it actually tell us about the nature of RPGing, or the nature of stakes in fiction? My suggestion is that it tells us nothing about either.In [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER]'s terms, then, there is no failure here as the new character can continue to pursue the same goals. (And in a traditional D&D game where the players play their PCs as a party pursuing the opportunities for adventure provided by the GM, typically this is exactly what will happen.)Like [USER=16760]@The Shadow[/USER], I am puzzled as to how this "fungibility of characters" point is meant to square with the "death as the principal, perhaps only, significant consequence point".Suppose that's true - why is it relevant to me? I play with players who care about the fiction, not just whether or not they have to change their playing pieces.As with [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER]'s posts, there are so many assumptions being made here it's hard to know where to begin unpacking them.One is that "the world" is an object of care or attention in RPGing. That's not true of much RPGing.Another is that there is a "story" or "plot" in which ripples may or many not occur. This is not true either of much RPGing.In any event, in the real world, many interesting things happen both to individuals - they have children, they become romantically entangled, they lose their jobs, their homes are destroyed by natural disaster, etc - and to communities - they hold rituals and ceremonies, they elect new governments, they complete great works, their great works are destroyed by natural disaster, etc - that don't involve death. I don't see why fiction would or should be any different.</blockquote>

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