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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2019363" data-attributes="member: 27012">I think you are doing the right thing but should make it clear that you are providing a stupid move safety net.  If you notice that the characters are about to do something stupid, always tell them, "You know, this will probably..." You need to bear in mind that there are a lot of D&D players out there who would rather play Conan than an FDNY firefighter.  The vast majority of real people (and thus the vast majority of D&D players) are not real life heroes who live a life of danger.  They are pretending to be heroes in the safety of their own home.  If you make the heroic experience too real for them, then all of the though processes and emotions that keep them from being real world heroes who live a life of danger can creep in and cause problems, especially if they become really emotionally attached to their characters.I'd also suggest looking at the volume of danger faced by an FDNY firefighter vs. the danger faced by Conan.  Nobody can endure the thousands of enemies faced by Conan if each enemy poses the sort of life-and-death struggle faced by FDNY firefighters on 9/11.  And I'd argue that heroism is also cheapened by repetition.  Just as 9/11 was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for 9/11 firefighters, the really heroic situations in your campaign should be rare and important.  If you want to treat the characters like FDNY firefighters rather than Conan, then make most of their encounters comparable to the trivial small fires and false alarms that FDNY firefighters normally encounter and save the 9/11 experience for the climax of your adventure.And that's fine if that's the climax to your campaign because whether the PCs win or die, the game is over.  It's not necessarily fine if that happens once a week, every week.  Especially if your players are emotionally attached to their characters.  It's like telling FDNY firefighters, "You'll be having a 9/11 scale event once a week for the next 3 years."  How many are up to that?  How many of their families, who are emotionally attached to them, are up to that?  Yes, characters aren't real, but the emotional attachment that players feel toward them can be very real.And what if your players do lose sleep over it?The way to allow realism and high-risk activity is to make the characters competent enough to survive high-risk activities with a minimum of risk -- an approach you seem to be rejecting.  Characters in books and movies have script immunity.  In real life, plenty of heroes die.  Several hundred FDNY firefighters did on 9/11, as a matter of fact.  A lot of people don't want to know what it feels like to be an FDNY firefighter in the South Tower as he realizes that the building is starting to collapse and he's going to die.  Heroism or not, it wasn't a fun first-person experience, nor was it fun for the families and friends of those firefighters who died because of their emotional attachment to them.  And a player who is emotionally attached to their character also might not have a lot of fun losing their character that way, even if the emotional experience is significantly less intense.  It's that "Jesus, Grandpa!  Why are you reading me this thing?" moment.And in real life, those who do face life-or-death risks every day do everything they can to stack the odds in their favor.  Think about those forces designed for high-risk deployments -- SWAT teams, SEALs, Special Forces, etc.  All of them are a lot more like Conan than FDNY firefighters.Finally, I'd argue that if you aren't really all that emotionally attached to your character and can casually accept their death if things don't work out, you aren't really capturing the heroic experience, either.  As you pointed out, heroism requires "personal sacrifice" and pushing a character that doesn't mean all that much to you through a meatgrinder isn't all that heroic to me, either.</blockquote>

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