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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8706529" data-attributes="member: 7006">I wonder if a lot of it also comes down to just whose &quot;story&quot; the participants want to experience?To condense it down to two individual parts, I think we could look at it in this way-- the &quot;story&quot; of the individual character, and the &quot;story&quot; of the player in the campaign.In the origins of RPGs, the latter I think was the primary protagonist.&nbsp; The game was about the players solving problems, earning loot, beating dungeons and the like via a character they had in front of them.&nbsp; But who that character was, was not necessarily that important-- because the expectation was many of these characters were going to die.&nbsp; But since the player kept playing in the game... playing new PC after new PC each time one got killed... all the stories and awesome events and such were attributed to the player and what they as a player accomplished with whatever character was in front of them.&nbsp; It wasn't &quot;Aeroche Windsprinter the high elf nobleman&quot; that survived the Tomb of Horrors... it was &quot;I survived the Tomb of Horrors.&nbsp; Here's what I did...&quot;The player was who was important, and to whom all the action, drama, and clever thinking was attributed to.But that was then, and this is now.&nbsp; And nowadays, it is the specific character who is involved in the action, the drama, the highs, the lows, the victories and the losses.&nbsp; These games are the stories of these characters, from everything that has happened to them prior to the game beginning, through the game itself, and the epilogue of the character after the campaign is finished.&nbsp; And thus... any sort of death that doesn't give closure to the life and experience and story of this individual character is seen as a waste.&nbsp; The player has put everything into their character's story in this campaign... not their own.&nbsp; And thus... death does not and should not necessarily be the end.&nbsp; It can be... especially if the death had meaning to both the character and the friends of the character who have to go on living without them... but otherwise, there's no reason why the story has to end.&nbsp; As has been said, there are many ways for a character to suffer setbacks in their story than just dying-- especially when those other ways allow the character to build themselves, the party, and the story on the whole back up from that crushing defeat.Figure out which one of these two types of people you tend to be... and that'll be a good indicator of just how important death is when you play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8706529, member: 7006"] I wonder if a lot of it also comes down to just whose "story" the participants want to experience? To condense it down to two individual parts, I think we could look at it in this way-- the "story" of the individual character, and the "story" of the player in the campaign. In the origins of RPGs, the latter I think was the primary protagonist. The game was about the players solving problems, earning loot, beating dungeons and the like via a character they had in front of them. But who that character was, was not necessarily that important-- because the expectation was many of these characters were going to die. But since the [I]player[/I] kept playing in the game... playing new PC after new PC each time one got killed... all the stories and awesome events and such were attributed to the player and what they as a player accomplished with whatever character was in front of them. It wasn't "Aeroche Windsprinter the high elf nobleman" that survived the Tomb of Horrors... it was "I survived the Tomb of Horrors. Here's what [I]I[/I] did..." The player was who was important, and to whom all the action, drama, and clever thinking was attributed to. But that was then, and this is now. And nowadays, it is the specific character who is involved in the action, the drama, the highs, the lows, the victories and the losses. These games are the stories of these characters, from everything that has happened to them prior to the game beginning, through the game itself, and the epilogue of the character after the campaign is finished. And thus... any sort of death that doesn't give closure to the life and experience and story of this individual character is seen as a waste. The player has put everything into their character's story in this campaign... not their own. And thus... death does not and should not necessarily be the end. It [I]can[/I] be... especially if the death had meaning to both the character and the friends of the character who have to go on living without them... but otherwise, there's no reason why the story has to end. As has been said, there are many ways for a character to suffer setbacks in their story than just dying-- especially when those other ways allow the character to build themselves, the party, and the story on the whole back up from that crushing defeat. Figure out which one of these two types of people you tend to be... and that'll be a good indicator of just how important death is when you play. [/QUOTE]

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